Ok, I show it's 7:00 p.m., what we're going to do first tonight is begin with the
presentation by skip cave and I'm not real sure exactly what to call it, so I'm going to
let skip introduce it and go ahead and do his presentation.
is this mike on. Testing. Testing. Is the mike working? Testing. Testing one. Ok.
all right. So I'm skip cave. I'm cto of cave consulting. We're a google partner.
we've basically been that way for 30 years, I guess.
and before google even, but really even got going.
but what we do is we deal with businesses in a lot of cities, probably 20 or 30 cities
just in texas where we help them, you know, internally their processes, how to
collaborate using the latest technologies and collaboration really it changes the game.
and you realize that you don't have to get together to collaborate. You don't even have to be on a zoom call.
you can collaborate in non real time. You can do one person can present a document in the middle of the night, next person to
see it the next day and comment on it. And next person can see it the next day and comment on it.
and so you and the comments are all recorded and collected. So you get the job done. You just don't have to be in one place or at the same time.
and so I'm going to talk a little bit about that. So the city of parker is going to need to achieve a majority of parker voter citizens to
get a municipal bond approved. So we know that. So you've got to convince parker's taxpaying citizens to pay for new
facilities, and that's going to require a clear and transparent presentation of all issues. So you need to make sure they understand why.
and what are the options an that kind of thing, meetings of the citizens that can be
important in the planning process, but they're not the only nor are they always the most
efficient way to do that. That's particularly true when the number of collaborators and citizens in the thousands.
it's a little hard to get everybody's input in one place, let alone in one meeting at one
time. So that's the problem. So that's a particular case when you're trying to do a municipal facility that's going to
get a bond on, you've got to get everybody involved in it, make sure they understand what's going on so they feel comfortable in voting.
so I can see the consensus. You must not only provide the rationale, you have to say why, what it is you need to be
also able to respond to everybody's questions and proposals.
you need to say it's not a good proposal or it's a good proposal. If it's a good proposal you might even modify the plan surprisingly.
so that's important to to understand that the plan is is a fluid thing, ok?
the modern technologies do provide powerful tools, allow interactions with hundreds of
participants without having them to be together in the same place, like even with so you
use video conference for that but more importantly, not even be together at the same time. And that's even more important that we don't have to get everybody at the same
place same time or even at the same time. So that's the goal.
so what are the key technologies? Well, since we're a google partner, we're going to talk about google.
google docs, google forms, google sheets, there are two things. They all come free if you have a gmail account.
so basically you can do all of this for free. And so that's a good good plan.
ok, so the google docs, you can collaborate and publish documents. That's really good for small groups to be able to work together because you can publish a
document. Everybody gets to see it and everybody gets to make comments on it. The comments show up in the document and you can and then the editors can agree to the
comments and make the changes or they can not. We'll talk about that a little bit more. Google forms is really handy thing to have because google forms is really easy to build.
it's just like a word doc, but it lets you post and I'll show you some pictures of them.
it let's you post a form up that people you can send it in an email.
people can fill out the form and submit it and the outputs are automatically gathered up,
put in a spreadsheet so you don't have to keep track of it. It's all automatic. You don't have to get it out right and stuff down.
it automatically picks up all our comments, puts it in a spreadsheet and presents and
sends an email to whoever is responsible or two or three people and say, hey, you've got a new comment. So soon as you get that email, you can go back and say, oh, I got the
comment. I'm going to respond to the comment, the comment and response, the time stamp,
who did it all show up on the web. So now you get to see what they ask.
you know, what was the response from the city when it was done, why it was done that
[inaudible]. And it sounds complicated, but it's real easy. It's all mostly automated, right?
so you don't have to work at this very hard. You just you do have to respond when you get an email saying, hey, there's a citizens
comment. You got to come back. And then there's the google sheets, which is the spreadsheet that logs everything down.
so whenever somebody presses a submit on that form, boom, a new line appears on that spreadsheet. I'm going to talk about that little bit more.
you'll see pictures, first of all, using a google doc to collaborate.
that's a really nice way to collaborate with five, 10 people, you can develop a needs assessment document with city staff.
so you put the city staff up there and you put the document up and you say create the
google doc. With google doc you don't have to have microsoft. Just any browser. They'll get you into google docs to open the document in google in a
browser. You can share that document with specific people. You can allow specific people to view, comment or edit the documents.
and more importantly, you can allow specific people to view comment specific sections of
the document. You can literally say, joe, I want you to work on this section of the
document. He gets an email and he goes in and he fixes that part of the document.
you say, bill, I want you to fix that part of the document. And he gets an email, she gets an email and there's the and they can comment on that part
of that. So you can send it one place and require work be done without having to have
meetings. You just simply you know, they get an email saying it's your job to do this
piece of the document. You're supposed to do that the population study, you know, go do
it. So assignees are all notified when they're assigned. So when you assign somebody if you've got the document, once you've built your skeleton
documents and, you know, just say we've got to do a population study of parker, let's say
since you've done that, you say, ok, I'm going to assign that to so-and-so.
they get an email and they get a copy of the document and they can go in there and fix up
that part of the document. So that's the way that works. Right. But how do you collaborate with a 1000 citizens?
that's a whole different problem, because if you had that document and a thousand citizens tried to suddenly want you to comment.
you get thousands of emails all at once. It's not a you do want to log it.
you want those comments to be logged. And that's the most important thing. So you create what they call a google forum and we are going to talk about a google form.
it's really easy to create. It's kind of like a google doc, except it has a submit button at the bottom. Right.
and so it connects to a spreadsheet. So once you've got this google form created, it's really easy to do.
then you send a link out to the city, to citizens with a link to that document and link
to the form and a link to the document they're going to comment on. They can look at the document and they can type in the form and hit submit.
when they type their comments, their questions in the form and hit submit first thing
happens with the spreadsheet, gets a new line in the spreadsheet with a time and stamp
and the person's name and their email address and whoever it was, that made the comment.
and right after that it's a comment in the spreadsheet. There's another blank spot in the spreadsheet for guess what, your response.
ok, you can either put it there or you can do it in a separate way. But it's easiest just to go in and specially type your comments, type your responses
there when you do that, that shows up on the website.
so now you have this nice little list of people's questions and their comments.
now we've done things like this for example, city of terrell has ask the mayor, you can
go type in, ask the mayor, you know, city of terrell ask the mayor in google, and you'll
see a whole page. You'll see this in a minute. I'll show you that. But anyway, so that's the basic flow, how you can [inaudible].
that means the citizens can wake up in the middle of night and read the document, make his
comments. Those are logged next morning. You walk in, there's an email in the city, you walk in, there's an email says, you know,
joe smith just made a comment on your document. You know, this part of your document, you need to respond with what the answer is.
so it kind of it focuses on responding to the citizens.
very important because they want to hear they want somebody to say either yes or no or
something about their response. So now we talked briefly about the needs assessment document.
most important step in planning process for this kind of thing, for the municipal facilities is developed needs assessment and post it all citizens.
so you make this needs assessment, which basically we'll talk a little bit about it, but it just says, you know, here's the population growth and here's how I need more room and,
you know, and here's how many offices we need. And it's kind of a combination of and here's our old offices and it's falling apart.
we got to fix them. And here's some new offices and here's how many more we need. And you just put that in that document so all the citizens know it's not a picture.
it's not a you know, the nice architectural drawings come later. This is a requirements.
this is what you're going to hand to the architect. Right? Once you get that finished, you'll lock it down and you hand that document to the
architect and the architect says ok. And I know exactly what you need. So you've basically locked in but that is exactly what you want that architect to build.
ok, so but of course the key to all that is that, you know, that document you created,
as soon as you created it, you put it into the big collaborative world where you let
people comment on it. You know, each each person will get a, go down through here.
I'll go through this, ok, we'll go through this real quick. First of all, the parker staff is going to be working and they're going to develop a
needs doc. You know, so that's the first thing. So you're collaborating now, this we are doing the small collaboration here, we got four
or five or six people who are working on this need document. The mayor's probably assigning jobs.
you need to put down this population that you need to find the architect and get the architectural requirements.
you know, whatever you got, you've got that in the list. And you send that out and you make each assigned tasks, they get emails, each one you've
assigned a task to gets an email. You know, they do their job on the document and their part and they can either write back
and say, yes, I finished and I've completed doing a completion job.
so that's the first step. Once they've got that document completed, then the parker
citizens get to look at it. That's the citizen receive the email with links to that needs assessment.
the thing that you wrote telling how many rooms you need and what the population growth
is and all that kind of thing. And a link to the response form, the form that lets them
respond and ask questions on that document. So let's focus them down to the points of that document.
and they can actually say, I want to talk about specifically the population study.
I want to specifically talk about the architecture selected or whatever they wanted to ask about. Right. And so they post that on there then.
so as soon as they click submit on that form. They fill out the form and submit it.
and it's logged the time stamp who they are, what their email address is, what their
address is. It goes into a spreadsheet and that's a shareable spreadsheet.
you can give several people access to that spreadsheet typically inside the city and an
email goes to the staff, you name them, who is supposed to know whenever there's a
response coming from a citizen.
so a citizen just made a new question or a new proposal.
email comes into the parker staff. Next step is they enter a response in the spreadsheet.
here's what we think about that. It's a good idea. We're going to change the document. And it's a bad idea.
we're not going to do that. Ok, then it all shows up on the website.
so you see the citizens name you should probably leave off their personal information.
just say name. Maybe I don't if you want, put their address, whatever you want to put on there, just their name maybe.
but in any case, you put that on the website and there question. And there will be a blank there until you decide you want to answer the question.
and when you do, then the question shows up on the website and you are all done. [inaudible] and if you say, yeah, that was a good idea, then you go back to the needs
assessment document, you change it and they can see the fact you've changed the needs
assessment document. Because the needs assessment document is still at that same link that they sent in your
email the first time. So that as a needs assessment document [inaudible] it's the same
thing that happens right at the very beginning, back when the staff was working on that. Remember, that needs assessment document was being worked on.
well, now the citizens are working on the same needs assessment document, ok, they're
asking questions. So that's the basic picture. Now, here's a typical of a muni complex input form.
this is what it looks like when a citizen clicks on this link. You get this nice little form and has includes your name, address, please, your phone
number and then please put your issue down at the bottom. You can make this as fancy as you want.
you can say, I want to know which item on the needs assessment document you want to you
can make it as fancy as you want to make it a multiple choice. But generally this is you know, it takes you five minutes to build this form up and
you're ready to go. It's a standard google, if you like I said, if you've a google gmail
account, you've already got the stuff.
you don't have to buy it. You don't have to do anything with it. It's just there. Ok, here's an example of the basic spreadsheet.
this is not fancy one, but this is what actually happens when a submit button is pressed
one line in that spreadsheet shows up first line, is bill smith, he's at 123 main street.
he says it will be a lunch room in the city staff and he says it'll be more like a break
room, coffee, drinks, snack vending machine. 75 is good no seating. Ok, that's the answer, right?
it's ok. That's what he wanted to know. You know. So that's the basic functionality of this thing.
you can go back and try to back it up a little bit more.
needs assessment document has five sections briefly. But I'll talk about this don't need a lot about it, but you need the rationale for going
forward to population growth, build out what's your tax base, that kind of stuff. So you're basically selling the people on why you're going to need more stuff, population
growth, whatever. Current facilities you talk about, what you got now and why it's limited, what's your
office accounts to office types, what the common areas, what you proposed.
they should be tabular. These are not pictures. They're just numbers. You know, like we got three private offices.
we got it's that kind of stuff. Just enough so they get an idea what you had before, what you want now.
and they can look at the population growth and say, oh, makes perfect sense, you know,
that makes perfect sense. That's why you do it and you compare with similar cities it's pretty easy to do. You know, I've got a couple of studies from that I forget it's in
north texas. Nick kog. I think it is. Yeah. It's got, you know, staff sizes for cities our size.
so, you can go look at it and say oh that's how big they are. No problem. And then you want to be very straight pros and cons what the costs are going
to be, taxes now that'll change. Now, remember, this needs assessment documents going to live on after you completed
because you haven't got a bid yet. So that costs will eventually change to the real cost.
once you get once you hire the architect and you get a cost so that, that's this
document is a live document. And citizens will save the length of that document.
we'll save it because every time they click on it, they'll find it. See how we are doing right now we have changed the prices, you know, found the costs,
we've got a better estimate on the cost. This is some detail that needs assessment. It's not a big deal.
but I go through this thing. We went through all that part. So this is the city of terrell used the technology to ask the mayor web page, the typical
web page with ask the mayor, you know, you can go in there and it's got actually kind of
place where you can type your name, your address and submit and question shows up there.
and the questions in red. And the answers are in black. Can't really see them very well because it's a little bitty I couldn't get much of the
web page on there without making it small. But that you can go to, you know, terrell ask the mayor and you'll see that page.
ok, so ok, there are some government clients we have, these are cities that we do this
kind of stuff for all the time. Basically most of these folks we do a website for.
our website are about a third or fourth of the cost of the city plus websites.
but so that's you know, that's one thing, because those guys charge for every module you
can imagine. Every time you buy a new module, they charge a thousand five thousand dollars. It's crazy. Anyway, so we do that.
and then so that's really my presentation. So if you have any comments or questions, I'm open for the questions.
ok, all right. Council, do we have any questions? Can we get a copy of your presentation.
absolutely. That would be most helpful. Oh, sure, sure. I have one on my.
I can send you a copy. Actually I could just give you example.
I can it's like I did for terry. I sent terry just to kind of run it past her.
I gave her a copy this. I said, please comment. I get comments from terry. Said oh I didn't like that. You should have said that.
you said that. Ok, thank you very much. So that's how that you know, so that's what you do in a collaborative world right.
I sent this out to her one afternoon and she responded back with me. Well, I don't know when she responded back, but I got her responses back.
and what I need to fix in this presentation. That's exactly how you do that needs assessment document.
that's how you do. It's a little different when you have thousands of people commenting.
but still, it's the same general idea. You want to make sure that you look at each comment and act on it.
right? And google, if you have a gmail account, all these things are free.
now, I usually have a class that I'll teach.
take me, you know, well, collaborative document classes, thirty minutes or something like
that. Show you how to collaborate on a document. That's pretty easy. I mean, there's fifty youtube videos on how to how to do a google
collarbority doc. You know, there's, there's stuff like that. If you, if you want me to help you do it, I'll be happy to donate some of my time doing
that, because it's not I mean, I do it all the time. I usually charge money, but that's my city.
so I'll do something. I'll do it much. I can help you out.
but yeah. So the basic issue is, you know, your website itself, getting hooked up to your website
depends on how fancy you want to get. If you just don't if you if you don't mind just having a page that says, you know, needs
assessment and you have a link to the document and they click on the link, that's pretty
simple. You put a link in your website and make a notification saying here's what needs assessment click here, you know, to see it, you know, because remember, we're going to
send out an email to everybody anyway with two links in the email.
when they get that email, one of them is going to be link to that needs assessment document so they can read it. And the second link is the link to that form.
I just showed you that they're going to post with their questions. So it's you know, it's pretty much what I call a link based world where everything is,
you know, all the documents, all the forms are on a link. And you can actually make the link, have a nice name, you know, like parker needs
assessment document or something like that, you know, dot org or dot com.
absolutely. Ok, so all collaborative documents have three options.
you can view only, that means you can look at it, can't do anything.
you can comment and view so you can place comments in documents, we can't change the
documents. But you can highlight I won't do it live, but you can literally highlight some
words in the document. A little comment box appears up in the right hand side of the
document. You go that click on that comment box and type your comment in.
when you hit, submit the comment. An email goes to the editor, whoever that is, the owner of the document.
and you can set up to be several people if you want. You have several people get that email. So it's it's basically a you know, a fairly I mean, you know, like I said, it takes it
takes about 20, 30 minutes for a class to show how you do collaborative document in
google. And it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty easy. And, you know, if you're going to do like I say, you're going to do a
needs assessment document or any other kind of document where you need several people collaborating, you're going to have we have a little class, you know, a 30 minute class,
say, ok, here's how you collaborate with google docs.
and if you have if you have a computer, remember, google docs does not require any program
install. If you have a browser, you have google docs, you have you have a browser, you
have the form. If you have a browser, you have you know, you have the spreadsheet.
it's called google sheets and google forms. Those things I just told you about.
those are all built in to the gmail account. Now, most of our cities are what we call google cities, so they use gmail for everybody
in the city. Right, because it's real cheap. And so they can basically they all have the collaborative capabilities all the time built
in so soon as they want to. You know, if somebody if the finance department wants to collaborate, wants to comment on
their budget, they post the budget and send it out to everybody, you know, send a link to
send an email. Everybody says here's the budget comment and everybody gets on it is no no
we can't spend that much money. Here's what we need to spend.
we're not bound by some of the regulations. Does anybody in the audience already seen this?
can we get your can you give your comments about it? Yeah, we actually use all this.
can't hear a word you're saying. We use this in our company, it's actually all our communication and everything.
[inaudible] you can use it as your [inaudible] over email system as well.
like, for instance, if I'm talking to my [inaudible] in detroit, they every day they
actually have a running list look at [inaudible] and I can add my comments to it
[inaudible]. My man.
[inaudible] those five people have access to the [inaudible].
you know, it's actually really super easy, you know.
like I said, it's it's a 20 minute, 30 minute class. Once you know that everything is here and this one is really it's called google drive,
everything's in google drive, once you realize that all of a sudden [inaudible] it's easy
. You just and what like you don't have [inaudible].
there's no save button in google. There's no save button. When you type
this, what are your comments? I find it very easy. I tried sending people word documents before to collaborate on and people are a bit
hesitant because it's something new. The thing I like about and I don't know if word has this feature as well.
but the thing I like about the google aspect is the comment only capabilities so that
people don't have to worry that a lot of people are just afraid to touch a document it,
might mess it up, that type of thing. And this is really nice because as you mentioned, you know, you just highlight a piece
and a comment button comes up and you just make your comments and get in there and it
immediately. Sends an email to the editor. And then they know that you've commented.
they can go back, they can comment on your comment. They say that's a good idea. I think I'm going to change the text and then the editor changes the text.
now, you can also give somebody else be two editors. So the second guy, you can change incentives, you change it.
the editors, you know, as I say, great power requires great responsibility.
so more editors you have, the more times you're going to get emails saying, I changed, I
changed it, I changed it. So you have to decide. That's kind of a careful tradeoff between how many people you want to have.
editors who remember are going to be notified when somebody changes as opposed to if
you're commenting, you know, hey, you know, you can you can see the document, you can make comments and you don't really care, except that if somebody responds to your
comment, you will get an email back, but only if they respond to your comments. So that's much more narrower requirement than, you know, the editor who gets everybody's
comments. That's why that's why a google doc is great for small group collaboration, but
not so good for thousands of people coming collaborating because you don't want to get
thousands. So you the whole idea is, you know, you put all that and you record it all in
a spreadsheet and you can either you can set up so that you, you know, you get notified
only once a day or something or the spreadsheet comes up. There's lots of ways you can set up how often you get notified or you can just put all
the emails in there and in one, you know, one bin and say all emails from this document
go here. And you just every day you go in there and see who else is commenting on it. One other question is.
[inaudible] richard's asking a question or richard made some comments [inaudible].
right. The screen that you put up was all city. So you have clients [inaudible]? Oh, yeah, we have lots and lots and lots of businesses.
all right. The only reason I did that because because actually the company started off
because my son was a did city grants.
he did grants for cities is his job. And so he was working on that.
and I kept saying, you know, you could probably automate some of this. And so we got into some other used to use lotus.
and then we realized google came out and said, ok, now we figure out google's got the perfect thing. So we started off doing using google and but because he was very familiar
with cities and he knew because we grants, he knew the city city council of twenty or
thirty cities. You know, we started talking to them about helping them start. And they started it. And probably for the first ten years, we were primarily a city based
company. And then we started we put our website up caveconsulting.com.
we start getting businesses calling, hey, can you do can you tell us how to do google this? In case I'll do that.
we want to take all of our all of our microsoft documents and convert them to google.
we want all of our old microsoft mail to go to google mail. So we do these big migrations and get them set up and rolling.
I'm going to have to stop [inaudible]. Ok. I got one more question. Sure. And that is I understand you said it's free to the city and [inaudible].
what are the competition other people? Because I know we're going to get the question, why didn't you look at whoever else,
who's your competition? Well, I mean, microsoft has similar stuff now.
microsoft got about a five year, google got about a five year head start over microsoft
on the idea that that you can live in the browser. Right now most microsoft is still oh you want to use microsoft?
well, just buy you know microsoft office for several hundred dollars and buy it for
everybody and you get a license, and that's all ok and google said, nah, that's not a
good idea. What you do if you have a browser and they like to use chrome, but you can use
you can use microsoft's browser or anybody's great. Use firefox browser doesn't matter.
and you sign into your account and your email's there, your documents are there.
they're all in the cloud. That's why that cloud picture up there on the wall. It's all in the cloud. I don't have anything on this machine.
but you saw there right now it's not on this machine. To answer that [inaudible].
if you use microsoft teams, it's not nearly as efficient, it's not nearly as easy to use
as this. And also costs a whole lot more. Oh, yeah. Microsoft teams is what will be competitive to this.
and big corporations, some use microsoft teams only just cus they're just microsoft.
yeah, [inaudible] microsoft shop. Microsoft pushes it really hard. And you don't. It's not nearly as it's not nearly as easy as this google is and certainly
not as [inaudible]. And the other thing is google, microsoft teams doesn't work real with
your cell phones. This works well with your cell phones. So as long as you have that google email address and your walking you can be in japan.
I developed this app and I developed this on my phone, half of it. I do most of my work on my phone so I can be anywhere in the world.
and I [inaudible] over time. [inaudible] yeah looks fine to me.
more questions. I'll get you I'll send you this presentation with my, I should put my email on there. I'll send everybody my presentation and you can email me with questions.
no problem. And this presentation will be after me tonight, it's online.
so, ok. Ok, perfect. Thank you. Skip, I have one question.
sure. Any of the other cities that you do this program with.
have they have any of them express any open meetings concern?
because if there's a live document, it's certainly city business.
and if more than three council members or more than two council members are commenting on
the same document without a meeting being called, have anybody, any of the other clients
express concern? I understand the ask the mayor. There's no concern there because it's just the mayor.
ok. But like a document, like you're talking about the needs assessment, would you would
the solution be limiting city council participation? Yeah, you could. Well, you can assign who makes the responses.
you can pick the city manager to be the responder. I don't you know, it doesn't matter, you know, whoever you want to sign to be the person
that responds back to the questions. I mean, you can make the mayor be the, if that's makes it legal, you know, you can't
really you know. I can I can envision ways to. Yeah. To quell that concern.
I was just wondering. Haven't really haven't seen that. I guess I haven't run across that particular problem.
usually they're so happy to be able to solve the problem. Maybe there's an internal maybe there's an attorney who gets upset, but we haven't seen
that. Ok. Anybody else have any questions at this time?
ok, ok. Thank you so much. Thank you, skip. Really appreciate.
ok, no problem. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to leave this thing here.
ok. What do you want me to send this presentation to?
you can just send it to me. Ok. I can forward it out to council. You want in, you want in a microsoft powerpoint or is it [inaudible].
can I send it, do you have gmail account? Yeah. You can send it either way. I can get it. Gmail account.
I'll send it to you in a gmail account [inaudible]. Well just send it to the lolsen@parkertexas.us and we can get it that way.
ok. Yeah. Alright. Ok, at this time, I will convene the parker city
council, regular meeting of the city council on march 2nd, 2021.
it is 7:31 p.m. Because we had a presentation by mr.
cave prior to the start of the meeting. At this time, I will ask mr.
olson, do we have a quorum? Yes, madam mayor, you do.
is mr. Slaughter with us tonight? I think he's online.
let me push a button. [laughter] michael can you hear us
? [inaudible] you can hear me? Yes. Ok. Oh there he is.
ok. Ok, let the record reflect that mr. Slaughter is joining us virtually this evening as he is not only out of town, but ill,
both. So at this time, we will do the skip will you lead us in the american pledge?
and jim reed, would you lead us in the texas pledge?
at this time, we will go to public comments and gregor [inaudible].
gregor, I'mma take this off, gregor [inaudible] four thousand six sycamore.
came for some comments about public safety and the public works.
number one first comment at the corner of chaparral and springhill estates, there's a
stop sign on chaparral, but nothing on springhill estates.
my wife has almost been t-boned there and a us postal truck was t-bone at that
intersection. I would like to see a cross traffic does not stop, at least on the
eastbound to chaparral. I was also told that a lot of vehicles go across and into that subdivision, the new
subdivision there. I guess it's all park or so doing one on chaparral.
I don't know. It's the corner. It's right where alan and parker all come together.
so I don't know who owns what. So that's number one.
number two, the blue reflectors for all the fire hydrants.
this is the one from in front of my house. The grader took this out.
I don't know what the thoughts were on the grader is a great idea.
hopefully this is every 100 years would get one of these. But the two closest fire hydrants from my house at four thousand and six no longer have
these. So at least on sycamore, I'd like to see these replaced.
I don't know what the grader did on other streets.
some of them are still there and the top's taken off and it's just the slides.
so. They break very easy. Yeah. So ok, that's all.
thank you. Ok, thank you. Ok. Jim reed.
I have some [inaudible] tonight, just this is just a comment that I was going to throw
out, and I don't know the answer to this, but I thought maybe I could throw it out there is that I was driving around and obviously some of our roads are starting to deteriorate
a little bit. One that I noticed I was over in dublin. I had been there a while in dublin. Looks like it's really deteriorating quite a bit.
my question is, and this may be recollection that I'm not I'm not, you know, knowing the
exact timing, it seems like we repaired that road and repaved not that long ago.
my question was, is there any recourse to actually get the contractors that made that road
for us to help us repair that cover that cost? So that way we get that done, maybe not absorb it ourselves.
so I was just asking the question, ok, thank you. That's it. Thank you so much.
ok, that's all the public comments I have.
I have a few announcements. One is on parks and recreations, which will meet virtually on march 10th at 6:00 p.m.
on if you'll go to the city's website and go to the calendar and then go to the meeting
on its agenda, it will tell you exactly how to go in to join that meeting
virtually. And it should be already, patty, that already on the website do we?
just got it today. Ok. [inaudible] just put it on the website. Ok, thank you. So it's already up.
next on the comp plan committee. I believe that's going to be on march 17th at 6:00 p.m., both virtual and in person.
is that correct? Michael, wake up.
that is correct [inaudible].
[laughter] that is correct we are going to be meeting virtually [inaudible].
ok, we're still working out technical problems.
on thursday, april 1st, that is the last day to register to vote, to vote in parker's
general election. The general election will be on saturday, may 1st, from seven to seven.
now, that's the general election day. Early voting will start on.
the 19th, I believe it is, and go through the twenty seventh?
twenty, ok. I don't have that in front of me. Ok, [inaudible] through the twenty seven.
ok, so ok.
and then there is the meeting calendar for the budget and tax information.
and ok at this time.
we will move to the consent agenda. Is there any council member that would like to have anything moved off of the consent
agenda? Yes, madam mayor, I would like item four specifically the finance piece to be
pulled off. Ok, at this time we will take out of section four the finance report.
anybody else? Ok, can we go I would take a motion for the consent agenda for one through four, with the
exception of the finance report under section four.
I move that we accept the consent agenda items one through four, except for, for the
finance. It gets confusing, doesn't it? Ok, we have a motion to accept the consent agenda one through four, with the exception of
[inaudible] of four for the financial report. Is there a second?
ok, we have a motion by council member lynch and a second by council member meyer to
accept the consent agenda one through four, with the exception of four the financial
report. Any comments, any discussion?
not hearing any then I'll call for your vote. All those in favor of accepting the consent agenda except for section four financial
report only. Please raise your right hand.
ok, thank you. Consent agenda passes five zero with mr.
slaughter voting virtually. Ok, council member lynch.
you want to ask your questions on the finance report?
yes, madam mayor, as I looked through the budget report for january 31st, I noticed there
were several items that were over the full year's budget and we're four months into the
year. And so I would like to ask the question or ask if you can explain what the process
is for handling budget variances. Ok, I'll ask that our director of finance, grant savage, to please answer the question.
sure. So if an item a line item is over budget within a department towards the end of the
year, the department head will do a budget transfer.
they'll submit to me to clean up their budget and to move maybe some savings that they
might have another line item into that line item to correct the deficit.
if it's a matter of at the fund level, the entire fund is going to be over budget.
that would require a budget amendment, which we would bring to council and we would amend
the budget to increase it. If it's a matter of one department going over their budget.
but there's a department that has savings with the approval of the mayor and city
administrator, there's the option to transfer money from one department to the other to
cover the overage. Ok, so a follow up question.
yeah. At what point do you intervene and stop departments from going over budget items on
budget items? As far as stopping them once it looks like their total budget is going to exceed?
that's at what point that there would be some discussion. As far as just one line item.
it's pretty typical to go over budget just because it varies.
vehicle repairs. Yeah, it's almost impossible to nail it down to the dollar.
so there's going to be some items that maybe we go over budget, some items, but then
there's also savings in some other items. And department heads are pretty good about looking at the line items that are over budget
and taking that into account when they're spending money for the rest of the year to maybe cut costs to have some savings to cover those overages.
ok. The last year. That last year was a prime example. They did a very good job of staying under budget within their department.
so there wasn't a single department that went over budget. Ok, just as a point of clarification, when grant gets information that leads him to
believe that a department is over budget or is getting ready to go that way, he and luke
sit down and generally get with the department head and say, you know, ok, well, it
appears that y'all are getting ready to go over budget in your training line item or, you
know, whatever, what's going on? And then they deal with it at that point in time.
so I guess I'm confused and I've never been.
yeah, I wasn't here when the budget was passed, but I did attend budget sessions and it
appeared that council reviewed budgets by departments
is you know, is, yeah, y'all were on council. When you review the budget, do you not do you review the department's budgets based upon
their priorities? And yeah, from that is that how budgets are?
I see that, but not just by department, but by the account or the priorities that they
have within the departments. So my concern is that if we look at.
if a department has flexibility to change where they're spending their money, what yeah,
I'm concerned about the oversight of that council is not providing the appropriate
oversight of what's going on within the organization.
in the planning session, and this is just my [inaudible].
in the planning session, that's when the departments come up with their needs list, wants
lists sometimes, but we usually knock the wants out and stick with the needs.
and then when the budget session comes up, those budget, those line items are based on
historic numbers plus any additional needs.
right. But situations come up that are unforeseen.
so although planning is great, it doesn't necessarily become reality.
at that point. Like grant said, they can have the flexibility within their own department.
and I don't know. I really can't remember in a situation where we were so over budget in a department that
it had to come back to council. But maybe somebody else knows the answer to that, because obviously it would if it was
something that was particularly critical or I mean, I guess it would depend upon the
dollar amount. You know, if you're over budget on paper clips, it's not going to come before council. But if it's an automobile or something like that, it would.
typically and I don't want to throw chief chef under the bus here, but they had some
repair stuff happen, you know, probably within three days of that happening.
I think justin and chief chef were in my office explaining what was going on, what
happened. So they know what they have to do. Now, they've got a game plan within their budget, moving some priorities back a couple of
months, starting some shifts. That third shift a little bit later than originally planned.
stuff like that. So they can make up for those lost dollars.
yeah. And the other thing is, once council passes the budget, unless there's something
that requires an issue to come to council, council doesn't have oversight.
that I'm not I don't believe.
[inaudible] it's like when say chief brooks wants to change something from line item to
line item, that doesn't need to come back to council. That's not an oversight deal.
if something is changed from fire department to the police department, that does come
back to council. I'm probably not saying this very well.
at least that's my understanding, is that right? Basically, if you have your fund, each fund council approves at the fund level.
so fire department, you're just looking at the bottom line number.
that's everything included in that fund. So basically you're approving at the fund level.
if they go above that dollar amount in that fund level, it has to come back to city council for a budget amendment.
and that's typically what we'll do. I don't think we did one, we didn't do a whole one last year did we grant?
we did. We had a budget amendment for the funds that we received for the cares act. That's right. That was right.
yeah forgot about that one. So, you know, something like that. And I think the previous year we did one for the fire truck.
we did. Just because we had a plan for the 2020 budget, but we took it out of the 2019
budget year. So at what point, you know, to answer to get an answer for terry and for
myself also and for the rest of us, at what point does it come back to council?
is it a dollar amount or is it? Anything over the fund. If like, let's just say fire department has a thousand dollars.
that's their fund. That's the total cost for running the fire department.
if it's one penny over, they've got to come back for a budget amendment. So within the department, though.
they're fine within the department.
you're talking about line items within. Yeah. Line items within the department.
if they go anything above a thousand dollars, for example, which is cumulative total of
all line items, then it has to come back. So how often has that happened? I mean, I'm trying to remember in my memory in the last year, I don't recall.
they exceeded their budget? Yeah. At the department level. So last year, no one exceeded their budget at the department level and the prior year
they didn't either. I think the year before I came, there were some extensive repairs at
the fire department and they had exceeded their budget and it was covered by another department's budget. So that's what terry, I'm a little confused.
like, what are you asking on that? Like, which part did they are you saying they exceeded?
maybe I'm just not understanding the question. In reviewing the financials that are presented to us for oversight, because
council has oversight of what is going on within the city of parker, we do not receive a
list of what disbursements go out within the city. We don't have any idea how many, you know, what dollars, what is being spent within the
city right now. I understand that's being worked on. And there will be a check register that will be available to all residents at some point
in the near future. But all we have to get any kind of glance, some any kind of glimpse as to what's
happening in the departments is by what's in this yet in this report and the budgets are
reviewed by council with the.
with the staff. With an [inaudible], with a discussion of the priorities that are being
the priorities for the year and those costs relate to the priority.
so my concern is when you change the cost, are you changing the priorities?
I think the costs only change in like novel situations.
right? In situations that are, you know, like something happens to the fire truck or
something, is that? Typically if we have cost changes, I'll just use an example is, you know, if we got a good
price on a road project, we're probably going to add more to it if we've got enough money
within the budget, within their budget. Those are things that we do sometimes.
would it be possible to have some type of not on every variant, but on major items that
are different from the budget? Would it be possible to get some type of you know, in the in the monthly summary where
you give a summary of what's going on in the in the month, you give a good summary on
the revenues, but on the expenses, on most of the revenues. But on the expenses.
yeah. Would it be possible to identify some of the big expenses that occurred, you know,
in the period? So yes.
and also as reference, you can always pull the budget that's on the website and it'll be
itemized out also. So if there's ever a question on one of those expense items that might not have a large
dollar amount, you can reference back to the budget and all large dollar amounts have
been itemized out in the detail budget. But again, the problem is this is a summary.
I don't have a detail of what those items are. So this could have I think one of the items we were talking about that was over budget
was actually something that needs to be adjusted to go between two different departments
because it was some contract that came through that line item.
but I can't see that. Right. I think that maybe.
I think the check register, I think, will answer a lot of your questions and you could at
least see but then again, the check register isn't necessarily going to have the account
number that that check was assigned to either. So, yeah, I can see what I can come up with for some there are some variances.
as long as it's not where you have to document every variance were a dollar over the
budget something. Yeah, I've never suggested micromanaging.
that's, yeah, that is definitely not the intent. And not yeah. Not in my [inaudible].
not in any of my intent. We're not looking to micromanage, but we want to understand what's going on in the staff
in the city. This is the actual and it includes expenses, what, you know, and.
it's just it's just a line item summary. It's a summary of the total, doesn't have that complete break out.
I would get to be.
that would be a lot of work just to break that out. I don't know of any city that does that in the metroplex or anywhere I've ever worked
before. I understand your concern and I can see it for some big things but for.
if you look at it on the group level, I think there's one item that's over budget.
on which line? If you go to the summary page by group category, instead of the individual, yeah the
group summary. And it happens to be the one that needed needs to be adjusted.
ok, where? I think care needs to be taken that using your words of micromanaging, you can get it to
an extreme. We do a workshop on the budget and then we pass a budget based on what the
division group leader bring to the table. And we either agree or disagree, but we come up with an amount at the end that we as a
council, we approved for the budget and they're held accountable for that.
and so if you're asking something on the detail of what goes into each one of the
departments, then that's where you need to ask them that question or look at this.
but having the micromanagement detail coming back with every dollar that spent, I'm sure
there's a value in creating a report for you to do that, because we don't we're looking
for to hire somebody to get some help. But maybe that would be a job that you'd like to do.
mr. Standridge, I don't think that's at all what I was saying. I'm not talking about getting a detail of all of the items.
but it was interpreted by me. And that's why I responded back to you in that way.
well, and again, I'm not asking for that level of detail. Thank you. Ok, when you were talking about which in particular, can you give me what
page you're on? You've lost me here from.
page 1521. [inaudible] so it's hard to see because they have [inaudible].
can you give me a line item? Well it's the first page, at the top it says group summary.
groups summary ok. What pulls it up on the category level.
I can't see the page number is what the problem is.
that is 1521. Unfortunately, you can't read it.
you can't read it.
oh yeah.
yeah. Let me see which one you're.
this was a report that was given out during the reporting session.
yeah, I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I'm trying to understand so we can
[inaudible]. That'd be 66, page 66.
ok, thank you sir. 66. Ok, yeah, which one are you concerned about terry?
well, [inaudible]. I mean, all of them [inaudible]. Well, yeah, no, my point was this group summary
pulls the accounts into higher levels of detail.
and yeah, this would be there's only one item, one line that is over the full year's
budget, which is pretty generous to be looking at.
yeah a variant, something that's over budget after four months to provide an explanation
of is all my comment was and as I mentioned in my speaking with grant earlier, it was
identified, I believe that there was going to need to be an adjustment to this line
because actually part of it goes to another to another department.
actually, it goes to the to the water fund. Yes. And my point there is that this is
not asking for an exorbitant amount of information. It's a very minimal request and it helps to provide oversight.
thank you.
other than that, I have no other items to point out at this time on the monthly report,
and I'm willing to accept it as is. Ok, o`k.
that was on water. I'm still.
the item that you see here under administration line number eighty four, department 120,
line eighty four maintenance has a total of fiscal expenses for the year twenty four
thousand five hundred nineteen dollars and one cent with a budget of twenty two thousand
six hundred. And this is typically where contracts are, which you wouldn't expect to see
a variance because we pretty well go through the contract.
we do budget. Yeah, ok. I just want to make sure I understood so that we can look at what your wanting, because if
I don't understand it. Well and I'll tell you, grant is excellent at understanding.
I appreciate him tremendously. He does understand what the information is and that's not at all where my point is.
ok, perhaps [inaudible] that you and I and grant
and sit down and look at this and come up with something that would be more acceptable,
more detailed. Are you agreeable with that grant?
yes ma'am. Thank you. I appreciate that. Ok, ok.
and was that a motion? I move that we accept the monthly financial report for january 31st.
ok, we have a motion by council member lynch to accept the financial report of the consent
agenda. Is there a second? I'll move to second. Ok, we have a motion and a second to approve the financial report of
the consent agenda. Any further discussion? Not hearing any.
I'll call for your vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand.
ok, anyone opposed? Not hearing any opposed.
passes five zero. Thank you. Ok, now terry's managed to confuse us all.
oh let's see. We are to next is any discussion, consideration and or any appropriate action of a free
public library.
ms. [inaudible] and ms. [inaudible], would you come up and tell us about the free public library?
I'm bethany [inaudible], four thousand six sycamore lane. Leanne [inaudible] 5310 estate lane.
and I don't know if you know it, but today is actually national read across america day. So it's a really good day for us to be doing this.
so what we want to do is donate a they call them little free library and it's basically
an eco friendly plastic lumber box and it's got an adjustable shelf in it.
and we would like to put it here near city hall and we actually kind of met with luke and
kind of discuss maybe where, but we're open to exactly where we would put it.
and we picked a red composite so that it won't get wet, there won't be bugs, the books
won't get destroyed or anything like that. Both leanne and I are willing to commit to coming up and checking through the box.
one of the things we saw online is a lot of times people will drop in their multilevel
marketing or their become a whatever religion you want to say or, you know, things like
that that do not belong in this. This is meant for books. We already have at least 150 books that we've either purchased or that we've had donated.
and we've have other people that are willing to donate books. The intent is to do a lot of children's books and a lot of children's books, more junior
novels, and then also like mysteries and things like that. The other thing that leanne and I are committed to doing is going through it to making
sure books like 50 shades of gray don't show up in it, you know, things like that.
I mean, we can't be responsible for everything in every book, but making sure they're
public appropriate. So this is a program there are over 100,000 free public libraries that are registered
online. And if you go online to the map, like you can actually click, there's one at the
church on parker. It's called the community unitarian universalist church.
they actually have two. One has nothing but reference books about guardian or sorry gardens and how to grow
things and then the other one's open to the public. Most of them, though, are like in your front yard by the street where people just put
their kids old books and other people come and get them.
and we would put it in the [inaudible] and the [inaudible].
we would purchase it. We just need approval for the city, for us to put it in and to keep stocking it.
and both leanne and I were talking today and we said the best thing literally that could
happen is for us to come up two weeks after it's been put in and there are no books in it
and we have to totally restock it. So I don't know if you know this, but 20 this is from forbes.
20 percent of school aged children read absolutely no books during the summer of 2018.
and that's a very scary thing to me. So anything that we can do to encourage people to read, I'm in favor of.
no, I don't have any questions, but I think this is an awesome idea. I know that there's been questions from different residents about having an actual
library here. And I think this is probably the best alternative.
my only question is it's probably a stupid question, but so once you take it out, it's
you don't have to turn it back in or how do you account for people who just walk off it
?there's no keeping track. Ok, so it's like an honor system maybe. Well, there's actually a plaque that we can put on it that comes free if you purchase it
from them and it says take a book, give a book, but there's no requirement.
so terry could come up and be going to the beach for the week and see four books that she
wants and take off with them. She could also come back from the beach and drop off five books or not.
and like I said, I've tried to get a lot of children's books, a lot of books that I read
to my kids. And I'm also trying to find spanish books, fairly basic ones, but things that
hopefully mothers have read to their children. And if every copy of brown bear, brown bear I can find disappears.
I'm thrilled personally, and I'll keep stacking it until I don't know, I move out of
parker whenever it is. And hopefully we would like to get to the point to put in others.
yeah. So what's the capacity, how much, how many books can you put in at one time.
it totally depends. We're hoping about 50, but if we use the bigger picture books, they take up a lot more
space. So it just kind of depends. The unitarian one. I went up and looked at there, there's about 50 books in there, but
like, you can't see them all very easily. I mean, you literally have to pull some out to look.
yeah, and I think, you know, when you guys do run out, I think the community will be more
than happy to donate their books, especially during the springtime when they're cleaning
out their houses and things like that, or when the kids are growing up. And I mean, I think you're going to have a good community
you know, any time. Or even on our website. I think that's a great, great place to
are you guys going to register on the? We will if the city allows us to. Yes. Ok, the nice thing about that is, like you can I mean, you don't have to live in
parker to come to it. You know, anybody can go and get a book.
and we are personally purchasing all the books at this point or having them donated.
they do have programs through this free little library where you can purchase set books
or you can go online and order any books that they have listed.
they also have a book club program where they and they change topics a couple of times
where they have a topic. And they'd like you to have like a parker book that everyone's reading or a parker theme
that everyone's doing. And then like maybe a community project. At this point, we are not planning on anything like that.
the hope is just to have books available for people.
I mean, we don't have a library in parker, you know, I don't know about anybody else, but I pay fifty dollars to be a member of the plano public library.
so I have a couple questions. One, you mentioned and luke mentioned registering in the system.
where is what is that? On the little and the actual littlefreelibrary.com there is a map and if you click on the
map like I went into 75002 and there are 16 of them, there's one at an [inaudible] police
station. There's one at lucas city hall. There's a bunch at people's houses.
I also went into plano. There are seventeen in plano.
you do not have to register and in order to be registered, you must have a steward who is
in charge of it. So I don't know if leanne and I'll switch off or just one of us will do it just for
somebody's got to do it, per say. But if you ever try and register yourself and you don't have a steward, they will not let
you register yourself because the fear is you don't know what's there then. We'll next.
let me say I'm like diana. I think it's I really think it's a great idea.
and I think a library. Yeah, a free library would be tremendous.
and I thank you all for doing what you're doing. Question about the box.
now, you mentioned and we talked a little bit about this you mentioned that there's not a
requirement to put the little sign. It is not required and not required that you register.
ok, and the reason I ask I reached out to bethany this weekend because I have some
concerns about the little the littlefreelibrary.org.
it has a great initiative of start your own free library.
and that's wonderful. But it also is pushing other agendas.
but I have serious concerns about and right on their front page, it says announcing read
in color. So it's it's a yeah, they're pushing it.
it introduces reading color. It distributes diverse books that provide perspectives on racism and celebrate bipoc,
whatever that is, and lgbtq voices. And yeah, I love everybody.
I have I am not. Yeah. I don't distinguish what somebody chooses to be, but I don't want people to be.
yeah. I don't want the city of parker to be associated with an organization that's
pushing these kinds of things. When we've got books that are going to kids.
now I have total faith that you will be watching the books and yeah, if you're watching
the books and you don't put the sign, I might.
that's a program you actually have to opt into. You don't opt out, either opt in or you just don't do it.
and I actually went and looked. And if you go on the irs website, you can look up 990s for like parker women's club or
anything like that. And I went and looked up theirs. I cannot find anything at all in their budget supporting this.
and when you look at that program, it's specifically supported by a company.
so I don't know if they're providing the major funding for it. I cannot promise you that twenty dollars in profit or whatever on this library that we're
buying part of that doesn't go to it.
the other thing that a lot of their profit goes to, actually more than 10 percent of their
total funds, this company only has one employee. That's it. Everybody else is a volunteer.
10 percent actually goes to putting free public libraries in like inner cities where they
can't afford to do it, where there's no one like us that would do this.
and they're also committed to putting books in it. And that was 10 percent of their budget in 2018.
that was the last year I could find their financials online.
I just you know, we see things where, you know, there is people pushing, you know, you're
watching to make sure there's no shades of gray and those other kinds of books.
but, yeah, putting the city of park or associating with an organization that's pushing
another agenda is a concern.
it sounds like you've thought about it and y'all aren't going to you're not going to be
giving people the website. It's only people that really know about the website will find that you have got books
here. Is that correct? And my guess is most of the people that are coming to this couldn't care less where
there's another one of these. They just want to know where the closest one is.
and I would ask that as a city, we don't promote their.
when you go online, it says where it's located. But like it wouldn't say the city of parker did it.
I mean, we can actually put donated by [inaudible] and [inaudible].
yeah. I mean, and some of them actually give names, you know, so we could even have a
name for our free public library that isn't parker free public library.
I mean, if that's important. But it's on city, the city property.
and again, I hear you and I and I appreciate your thinking about it and addressing the
issue of, you know, the diligence of making sure the books are there.
I just want to make sure that we aren't promoting this organization as a city, sending
people there. Have a couple questions also.
so where would this box be located?
well, luke was actually suggesting kind of close to where you guys park, I think, here.
but I was thinking we thought it would be better right. By the path going into the reserve.
right by the parking there. Right across here. Yeah. So somebody could they would see.
look out the window. I think that's a good idea. I do have a concern similar to what terry just expressed about the organization and even
being associated in any way with an organization like that.
so my. And it's very generous for you guys to be willing to donate this.
I mean, that's just awesome. But my question is, did you consider having, like, one of the residents that does
woodworking or something like that build a similar box?
and if the municipal complex, what are we calling it?
if it all gets done, we would like to donate a different one that's bigger that would
have more books and stuff. At this point, though, knowing that everything's going to get torn up and everything, we
really don't feel that now's the time for that.
well, the the box could be moved. I mean, it depends on how it's constructed.
so, you know, if it was even put in concrete and, you know, two by fours or however the
however it's constructed and I assume it would be like two by fours and then some kind of
siding on it and a roof. So would be watertight. But I mean, that's a fairly simple project.
the wood ones don't last. I can tell you that church is falling apart.
the wood ones don't last long at all. The wood ones, even if pressure treated all that, they just don't last long.
my house, we had a wooden one by there within six months to a year, it was already
falling apart just based on the usage it got, the elements it was in, it just started
falling apart real quickly. Are you [inaudible]? I guess it depends on how it's constructed because, I mean, there are sheds that are in
people's backyards that last for years. The problem is someone will leave the door open on it and it gets wet inside.
it starts. It just causes a lot of problems. Are you are you concerned with doing it ourselves as opposed to doing it with this
organization? I would rather not be associated with this organization, and I'm not personally or
personally, I wouldn't be associated either, but I would rather the city separate itself
from and not have anything to do with this organization. If that's the city's decision, which I'll be willing to do this without this organization
being involved. I mean, we don't have any commitment. It's just going to be a longer time frame.
we were just trying to get the and and get something that's going to last as long as
possible and look good until right before it totally dies.
how about if I help you get the the box built that's similar.
maybe a little larger than this. I mean, I'd be willing to do that. It's just a time commitment and all that kind of thing and making sure it's as safe as
possible.
whatever you all decide.
any other questions, comments? Ok. And when I had when we had our business in garland, we supported not this business,
but for the people that wanted to build their own and and do these free libraries.
and we donate a lot of books, too. But it was very, very successful.
it didn't start off really well because people didn't know about it.
and but we'd have to do some advertising. But it became a very strong thing for the kids that wanted to get a book like what you
were saying. The family goes on vacation, they take a bunch of books with them, but there was always a supply of books.
and I think it's great to get more people involved in that. And where we can do it without being part of that organization, I think is positive.
ok, we have a decision to make on how we want to proceed, it sounds like we all are in
favor of the free public library. The question will come down to do we do it on our own or do we do it through this
organization? So think about it.
and if someone wants to make a motion, I will certainly accept a motion.
madam mayor the agenda item is for free public library, not necessarily a little the.
it's not necessarily for the little, what's it's called? Little free library. So, ok, an approval of just the [inaudible].
ok. Ok, thank you. So I would take on a motion for a donation to accept a donation of a free public library.
I would like to make a motion to table this until the next meeting and then the meantime,
maybe we can get together and come up with some alternative ways to get a box adequate or
better than this and move forward with the project so you can move forward with the
project. I understand that you're asking to table it. And I'm not suggesting that we go with a company necessarily that we're in disagreement
or we agree we don't want to be with, but we're at an opportunity with the newsletter
that you're that you do cindy. It could be an announcement to say coming soon, a free library.
and since the newsletter doesn't go out very often, we'd miss an opportunity if we table
it to stretch it out for another month or two. And I'm not sure what we'd gain by tabling it and coming back again.
could you could you not? Well, can you just make a motion that there's one, but that it's one that has to be handmade and
not registered on this website?
I mean, I would be open to that. I mean, as long as because and that gives you an opportunity to work with them to find
other vendors or other companies that can make it.
I mean, but it also allows us to.
open them and they repaint it, you know, to say free public library and stuff.
so there are a lot of other options out there. This was just an easy weather protected.
to try to get it in. Way to do it. Ok. At this time. We have a motion on the table.
yes, you may. I'd like to withdraw the motion to table this and make a different motion
that we approve the concept of the free public library without
going through this vendor. Ok, so your motion is to approve the donation of the free public library, is that correct?
and accepting our donation. Right? Ok. Ok, is there a second.
I'll second. Ok, we have a motion and a second to approve the donation of the free public
library with a homemade I don't know what to call it.
[inaudible] custom construction box. Wonderful thing.
any further discussion? Not hearing any. I will call for your vote.
all those in favor of accepting and approving the donation of the free public library
with the custom book box.
[inaudible] ok, michael, do you have a question? Or are you voting?. Cutting out on that, so I was
trying to understand are we stating specifically [inaudible] little free library?
they they're accepting the free library from bethany and leanne and using, just can't use
the little free library company. As a vendor.
not using. Not using them. Yeah, ok. Thank you. Anything further?
if not, I will call for your vote, all those in favor of approving, accepting the
donation of the free public library with a custom crafted book box.
please raise your right hand. Ok. Anybody opposed?
ok, motion passes five zero. Thank you, ladies. Just as a comment and I'm putting cindy on the spot.
I think this is awesome. Can we put an announcement out there in the newsletter that says
coming soon, a book box something?
yeah. It's ok with me. And I'd like to. Sure.
leanne and bethany could probably provide you the words for it to have it however you want
to do it. What they're talking about is cindy's getting ready to put out one of the newsletters so
she can get that. And I really like to thank you all for coming forward with this.
I think this is an awesome idea, great. Yes. Very good.
thank you. Ok, I think you've got just about the rest of the agenda.
I'm ready. Ok. Next up is consideration and or any appropriate action accepting the 2020 racial profiling
and annual reports. Chief brooks?
honorable mayor and city council. I'm richard brooks, the police chief. I'm pleased to report that the parker police department is in full compliance with all
laws concerning racial profiling, as stated in the 2020 racial profiling report in the
cover letter on page one and the summary of findings on page 32.
additionally, the parker police department is compliant on its public information
efforts, officer training and audits.
I would like to point out that we received no complaints against officers in 2020.
I would also like to advise the city council of the current situation concerning the
texas commission on law enforcement. Beginning in 2019, [inaudible] was reviewed by the sunset advisory committee.
the role of this committee, established in 1977, is to review the need for state agencies
and to determine their effectiveness of the agency itself and their programs.
the sunset advisory committee released its report on [inaudible] in november of 2020, and
[inaudible] received an unfavorable report. The report concluded their agency was fragmented, had outdated systems with poor
accountability, a lack of statewide standards and inadequate training of [inaudible]
personnel. The advisory committee concluded [inaudible] was toothless.
the advisory committee identified four specific issue areas with 12 recommendations for
improvement. The texas police chiefs association is working closely with [inaudible] on
any recommendation for reform of their agency to ensure departments and officers are not
unnecessarily adversely affected by these reforms.
additionally, kxan in austin, texas, investigative reporters ran a story titled failed
collection efforts spotty data undermine texas racial profiling law.
in this report, they uncovered that [inaudible] had not been collecting the required
racial profiling data and had not been holding agencies accountable for failing to report
data, conduct audits and comply with racial profiling law.
this report prompted the arrest of one texas police chief and an email was sent from
[inaudible] to all law enforcement agencies in texas.
this email concluded by saying, please be advised that failure to submit the required
report within the designated reporting period january 1st, 2021 to march 1st, 2021, may
result in license action against the chief administrator and or civil penalties up to
five thousand dollars against the agency. I would just like to thank the council for their support in allowing me to ensure the
parker police department is compliant with its racial profiling reporting program, and
I'm positive since it was on the agenda that was canceled. We got the report to [inaudible] by the march 1st deadline that y'all had in january,
that they're not going to arrest me or find me 5000 dollars.
if you have any questions about the racial profiling report. I'd be happy to answer those.
any questions? Also included in the packet then was the department parker police department 2020 annual
report. This is the second year of a five year program to provide a meaningful
statistical data tool that will help us make sound decisions concerning future policing
in parker and to memorialize programs and accomplishments in any given year.
I'm encouraged with the data provided this year and that this report will be a valuable
planning tool in the future. I'm happy to answer any questions about the
and the response times two [inaudible].
is that in line with what you want it to be for the city of parker's growth?
because we are continuing to grow and it does not appear the crime rate is going up.
so I guess I'm going to answer my own question there. I'm assuming that it's in line with where you want it to be.
I am very encouraged with the numbers. Yes. Yes.
help me understand. So the crime rate is not going up, but it seems like we have more
reported offenses in 2020 versus 2019, it was like 12 percent.
but that's expected. Is that and expected. As population grows. And again, parker is unique because we're dealing with so few numbers
that one particular incident of a child or a teenager walking down the street
burglarizing 10 vehicles can sway those numbers. That's why I want to emphasize that this is a five year project.
and when we get a longer look at what's going on in parker, we can make a more reliable
assessment of needs moving forward.
one thing that I was encouraged by is that the response time seemed to be both.
I mean, seemed to be pretty much similar. I know we had a spike in april for the priority two it was a little delayed, but it seems
pretty much across the board that whether you have a priority one call or a priority two
call, it's pretty much the same kind of response time, which is pretty good. And I'm encouraged about that.
can you refresh my memory as to why we started last year with tracking this?
I mean, you had you had these reports from previous years, but we only have two years
worth. We weren't collecting the same number. The first step was to get the records management system in place.
so we're not doing a manual counting based on what an officer put in his spreadsheet.
so we're now relying on the records management system to provide this data.
so we got it up and running. Year one was last year. Now, year two, in five years from now, we're counting comparing apples to apples, not
oranges and lemons. And whatever we were doing prior to that was a manual system that was not reliable.
I feel comfortable with these numbers that they're reliable.
I just have one last question. On the accidents. The five year we've seen, like in 2019, we've had between 2019, 2020,
we've seen a significant increase on the injuries, major injury accidents from 13 to 30.
is there any way to isolate the areas in parker that we're seeing the major accidents,
the injury accidents? And is there anything that we can do to try to mitigate that in the coming years?
maybe? We do. We do. Look at that monthly. We get a report of why a particular accident occurred.
[inaudible] what caused that injury accident.
and then we try to direct enforcement action to that particular area and to what let's
say it's ran a red light violation, was responsible for five of those.
then we try to concentrate our enforcement efforts on that running a red light.
we would we would agree
any other questions for the chief? Great job. I really appreciate it.
and then also, I would like to just add something that particular here about the
department. On march 1st, 1971, the parker city council officially acted by orders to
create the first law enforcement agency in parker. Yesterday marked our fiftieth anniversary.
over those 50 years, many officers, employees have served the department.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank those that came before us for their
contribution to our department and the role they played in where we are today.
I'm very proud of our organization. We have very dedicated professional staff that serves our city.
they consistently provide excellent service to our residents and those visiting parker.
I would like to take this occasion to thank each of them for their service, and I
encourage all of you to do that as well. Our team has a few mementos to provide each of you to commemorate this milestone.
and we plan to use these in our interactions with our citizens, and the children in
parker for the remainder of the year. This week will also adorn our patrol vehicles with a sticker to mark the occasion.
and these stickers will look like the fiftieth anniversary side of the challenge going
that I'm about to provide you. I would like to thank all the councils, especially this council, over the 50 years of
their support in making this a great organization. And I would also like to thank the citizens of parker for their awesome support of the
employees. I look forward to many more years of excellent police service in parker.
and having said that.
we have one reserve officer with 50 years experience. Was he here from day one?
.
yeah. Yeah, but did you get caleb
one? Yes.
yeah, we have to. Y'all got one of each, but the officers have their own box to hand out
[inaudible]. Ok. At this time, I would take a motion to accept the racial profiling report
and the annual report. I'll make a motion to accept both reports as is.
ok. We have a motion from council member abraham to accept the racial profiling and annual
report of the police department. Is there a second? I second that.
we have a motion and a second that we accept the 2020 racial profiling and annual report
of the police department? Is there any further discussion?
ok, then I'll call for your vote. Please raise your right hand if you are in favor.
anyone opposed. Ok, is that in favor?
ok. I'm in favor.
ok. Thank you michael. It passes five zero.
thank you. Next, chief brooks will stay right with us and talk about resolution number
twenty twenty one dash six five nine regarding the wylie jail services inter local
agreement, honorable mayor and city council. I'm richard brooks, the police chief.
on january 1st, 2021, the wylie police department opened a new detainee lockup or holding
facility. The wylie police department has decided to offer jail services to other smaller
jurisdictions. This agreement will provide handling, processing, housing and detention of
persons arrested by the parker police department. The inter local cooperative agreement for jail services is a standard agreement which has
been reviewed and approved by our city attorney and the city of wylie.
I would like to point out a few sections of the agreement, section three zero one.
the fee for an inmate is 125 dollars per day or portion of a day.
fees are reviewed annually by wylie with notification to parker prior to an increase.
section 302 we're billed quarterly. The other cost of services refers to costs described in section 505 e, where wylie incurs
personnel costs associated with detainee protection at a medical facility.
we will have to reimburse wylie should parker police department be unable to relieve
wylie police department within one hour at a medical facility.
we believe will be able to meet that hour. A significant benefit to entering into this agreement is that the parker police department
will be able to house detainees on class c misdemeanor warrants.
the city of parker has been unable to house detainees on these charges at the collin
county jail. Having this facility will allow the city of parker to enter all parker
municipal court warrants into the tcincic regional database.
any person who's wanted by the city of parker, who encounters law enforcement in our
check through the system, will be identified to that officer as wanted.
the city of parker will most assuredly see an increase in warrant clearances through this
agreement. I recommend approval of this agreement. We'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
would you talk just a little bit about why you feel it's a good idea to move our jail
services from collin county to wylie? Sure, the current collin county facility is farther away than wylie.
the processing time into the jail at collin county, we had one go last week was about 92
minutes. The officer was there before clearing the jail.
and we are going to significantly cut that time in wylie.
number one, they're not as busy. Number two, they agree that our situation dictates that they be moved to that facility
quicker. So we're going to set up a process, we'll be able to walk in, do the paperwork,
hand over their property, and that officer cleared back in the city. So the drive time is going to be reduced, the processing time is going to be reduced,
which gets that parker officer back into the city, in a much quicker time, we've had
instances where we've been at the collin county jail for more than four hours, where an
officer's just sitting there with a prisoner waiting to be processed. That's not the standard time.
90 minutes is more standard, but we're hoping to cut that down to 30 minutes tops at the
wylie facility. And so we're going to reduce drive time. We're going to reduce processing time, which gets that officer back here quicker.
so this is a very exciting thing for us to consider.
so I'm very happy about this situation.
could you talk about our liability?
wylie versus collin county?
in [inaudible] the liability that we assume?
no, basically, they're the same.
wylie did have a section in there that we through the city attorney
the there was a lot of back and forth on the civil liability section of this contract
because the first draft was much more.
much more onerous on the city of parker than the final version, this is the wording is a
little different, but we think that the deal, the liability accepted liability with city
of parker is similar to that of collin county. We will not accept the way the final draft came in the indemnity section.
we are not accepting any liability for any negligence or misconduct on the part of the
wylie officers. It's only if something natural occurs that in their care of our
prisoners. The answer to your question is it's the endgame is the same as the collin
county contract. The wording is just a little different.
the type of you had mentioned what class of offense would
qualify for the wylie jail versus collin county jail, I can't remember what you said.
well. But my question is at one hundred and twenty five dollars, is that what it is?
one hundred twenty five dollars a day? Is that I mean, is that a losing proposition for us or how does that affect us on the
financial side? No, I don't believe so. I believe it's going to be a benefit to us.
on the financial side, we will take every person arrested to the wylie facility from
capital murder to a class c misdemeanor. So they'll all go there.
but the class c misdemeanor part that I was talking about is allowing us to put our
warrants on the computer. So we're going to see a huge it should see a significant increase in revenue from warrants
because currently we can't put them on the computer. The only person that knows someone is wanted on a parker warrant is laurie
if we run across someone who has a warrant, parker officers don't even know they're wanted
because they're not on the system, because we're going to be able to do that.
so the the going from 125 dollars to pay the city of wylie instead of ninety seven dollars
to pay collin county that 28 dollar difference, we're going to more than recoup that in
revenue from being able to put our warrants on the computer.
so typically class c misdemeanor, that's settled like within hours or I mean, they're
not in there for days and days, right? Typically. Yeah, but they won't be in there.
we have talked with our municipal court judge.
so if there is a municipal court warrant in the city of wylie and the person is going to
be there for an extended period of time, what would happen then is the judge would say,
you're going to do time served, so you're going to get so much credit per day being
there. Well, we would factor in the cost into that per day to get them out of the jail.
if it if it's a, let's say, an assault class a assault, they'll be transferred to the
county had at minimum of every other day. A bus is going to come pick them up.
so we would no longer be charged on wylie's charge.
so longest they'll sit. There is three days that we would be charged.
they would be transported to the county they become the county's prisoner we're no longer charged.
not on b or above, but we would recoup it somewhat on the municipal court revenues from
the warrants. Ok how many how many jail days did we pay for last year in 2020?
not 100 percent sure, but it wasn't very many. Yeah.
yeah, it's going to go up significantly because we're now going to be able to put warrant
only arrest in the jail. So it's going to go up, but it's not going to go up.
my feeling is it's not going to go up more than the revenue that the increase in revenue
generated from serving warrants across the our region is, is I don't know what the
[inaudible] region is, but I believe it's about 27 counties that they'll know that
parker person is wanted. And there's another agenda item below this that we'll get into
to speed that process up. Grant, do you know how much, how much, how many jail days we paid for last year?
I would agree with that. Chief. I've just got a quick question on the language here on section three point zero
one, it's as a fee for an inmate's a hundred twenty five dollars a day or a portion of the day. So it doesn't matter if they're there for four hours or for 24 hours.
it's still one hundred twenty five dollars, right? Correct. So then why do we even have a portion of the day?
why would you say twenty five hundred twenty five dollars per day. Is that just because of the legal issue?
if the wording was 125 per day. They're afraid that we would argue it was only a day and a half.
yeah. So if we bring them in to eleven o'clock at night on the first and they bond out at
two am on the second, we're going to get charged 250 dollars and they were three hours.
that's just the way it is.
we'll just hang on to him until. 12:01. Yeah, kind of defeats the whole purpose of what we're trying to.
buy whataburger, you know, get them some nice to eat.
resolution number twenty twenty one, dash six fifty nine for the inter local jail services
agreement between the city of parker and city of wylie. Ok, we have a motion for approval of resolution number two zero two one dash six five nine
resolution of the inter local jail of services agreement between city of parker and the
city of wylie. Is there a second? I'll move to second. We have a motion and a second of resolution number two zero two one
dash six five nine. Is there any further discussion?
not hearing any. I'll call for your vote. All those in favor of approving resolution number two zero two one dash six five nine, an
inter local jail service agreement between the city of parker and the city of wylie.
please raise your right hand. Ok, anybody change their mind?
ok, passes five zero. Thank you. Ok, chief.
now we're to.
consideration and or any appropriate action on resolution number two zero two one dash six
six zero regarding the electronic warrant payment program.
honorable mayor and city council, I'm richard brooks the police chief. In 2012, the north central texas council of governments released a request for proposals
for merchant provider hosted electronic payment processing of warrants, bail and other
fines through myriad payment methods, including, but not limited to swipe, telephone,
computer and kiosk. Government payment services inc.
all paid was awarded the contract on august 1st, 2012.
since that date, 28 municipalities have joined this service to provide an efficient
payment system concerning warrants, bails and other fines.
this item is a request for the city of parker to join this free service to provide an
effective and efficient manner for citizens to pay warrants issued by the parker
municipal court throughout the metroplex area. All paid exchange cogs electronic warrant payment program is a patented electronic
warrant payment system that links regional, county and local agencies into a single smart
enforcement payment network. This system allows participating agencies to process warrants originating from other
participating agencies on site. It delivers real time warrant resolution remotely to all participating jurisdictions.
it delivers next day banking transfers for all exchange payments processed by member
agencies. It reduces officer exposure to the dangers of effecting arrest for simple bench
warrants. It mitigates agency liability and responsibility for offender safety during
transportation or housing. All paid exchange features toll free 24/7 365 days a year payment specialist for
customers and payers. The service is provided at no cost to the agency or city.
the defendants pay a reasonable convenience fee for each transaction.
internal controls and reporting features are provided. Allowing adequate revenue tracking and prompt dismissal of warrants.
I request approval of this resolution to become a participating agency with all paid
exchange. Troy crow, senior account executive sales payment services with all pay, is here
tonight to answer any questions you may have as am I.
questions? Do you have a
question?
that's pretty vague. You know, not that it would affect us, but I would just it's just very vague, that's all.
well, let's get specific. There you go. Good evening. My name is. My name is troy crow.
as chief said, I'm a senior account executive for the state of texas for all paid.
I currently hold a masterpiece officers license in the state of texas. I also hold court clerk certification in the state of texas.
so if nothing else. I speak the language.
the rate is a rate that was determined by cog when the contract was let.
it's an rfp, so we have to go by that rate and that rate is five percent.
any bond, any bail is five percent under the contract. So if they pay, if they have a warrant with a 500 dollar bond, they're going to pay an
additional twenty five dollars on top of that to cover the rate. You never see that.
that's entirely transparent to you all. You never write us a check. It comes straight off the top.
but the blessing about this is that unlike most of merchant processing systems, you, the
city, receive 100 percent of the revenue that you're due every time.
the other thing that's different about us, which is not true about any other processor out there, is every single payment that is processed through our system is guaranteed 100
percent certainty of funds. There are no chargebacks ever for any reason, even for fraud.
so you always get your money and you always get everything that you're owed.
[inaudible] now, are the two resolutions working together beginning to make better sense to you? Yes.
good. Did that answer your question? It does thank you. Good. Anything else?
I just have one question. I think it talks a little bit about this earlier. But just to clarify, this is only for the warrants right now.
right. But I understand you guys are thinking also about in the future maybe to handle
traffic citations, that's the one that we always end up waiting on.
all paid is a company that has been in been in business for 23 years now.
all we do is always serve is government. And our key, our base, our bedrock service is municipal courts, fines of fees and jail
and bail. And that's where we come from, we can provide you that service. The rates are different. They're not controlled by the contract.
in fact, the rate of the window for a for an in person [inaudible] would be three and a
half percent, which is under the state cap. It's a percentage more than what you're appearing to pay right now at your current
processor at least on the utility side. But we do all that.
any other questions? Discussion. Ok, then I would take a motion, a motion regarding resolution number twenty
twenty one dash six six zero. I'll jump out there.
I'll make a motion that we approve resolution number twenty twenty one dash six six zero
regarding electronic warrant payment program. Ok, is there a second.
I'll make a motion to second. Ok, we have a motion by mayor pro tem standridge and a second by council member abraham
to approve resolution number twenty twenty one dash six six zero regarding the electronic
warrant payment program. Any further discussion?
I just have one question that I didn't ask toby earlier.
how long does it take to install it? [inaudible] I'm going to say to you that we'll have a full and up and running within 60
days, 60 to 90 days. The process has to take place.
once the paperwork, once you guys or the mayor or the city manager on
[inaudible]. As soon as I receive the paperwork, we began [inaudible] in the back.
all the training and all the installation and all that [inaudible] information I have
gathered to get this done, 60 days, early ninety days, tops.
and that's pretty [inaudible]. But the nice to know about it, that there is no software that's installing our systems,
it's all done [inaudible].
thank you. Ok. Ok. Anyone else have any additional questions, discussion?
if not, then I will call for your vote. All those in favor of approval of resolution number two zero one dash six six zero
regarding the electronic warrant payment program, please raise your right hand.
anyone oppose? Your opposed? [inaudible] michael you're for, correct?
hand signal up or down. [laughter] ok, thank you.
the motion passes five zero, thank you.
thank you very much. That was a little delay is kind of weird. Oh, ok.
next, any is does anybody have anything they would like to add at future agenda items at
this time? As you know, you can always email me things at any point in time to be put on
the future agenda items. Anything to be added now?
I do have the financial, don't worry about it, the financial meeting, ok?
ok. Next is the emergency communication commit.
ok, this is this is just as as good as time as any.
we need to have a planning committee, a planning session, and we generally have it in late
april or when it's not a covid year. We generally have it in late april or early may.
would y'all look at your schedules and see when y'all might be available and luke tell me
what's good for the staff to have. The planning meeting.
late april won't work because of early voting.
we can watch me at the fire department. Fire station. Yeah. Huh?
that's cabo. That's different.
oh, well, then it'll have to be after my won.
I hadn't even thought about that. You're right. So if y'all want to look at your schedule and let me know if at all possible, we would
like to start the planning session at noon or somewhere in there so we can get finished
with it without keeping staff over time. Yeah, if it's not possible, it's not possible.
but please be looking at that and send either myself or luke the two or three dates that
are good for you. Ok, ok.
the other thing we need to schedule a date for is we were going to have a disaster
debriefing. We wanted to look at all the things that happened during the freeze, the
good, the bad and the ugly. So we don't repeat the mistakes we made and that we are better prepared for things that
come up the next time. I will say that I think that gary and the water department guys, as well as all the
public works, y'all did an awesome job gary, y'all really did. [applause] y'all probably don't know this, but the guys stayed here.
they didn't go home because they were afraid they couldn't get back and they knew they
needed to be here to turn off water, to turn on water and do all the things, scrape, you
know, break. Gregory's street [inaudible] was scraping the streets.
I mean, y'all just did, I'm just so thankful.
thank you very much. All of your guys. Y'all just were outstanding.
since you're talking about that. Not near as not near is having an impact as gary and his group did.
but I think that the some of the council and the city administration did a great job and
and doing some of the things behind the scenes and getting electricity turned on and
moving forward. Yeah, you're correct with luke and grant getting out payroll.
and I don't even want to talk about how that might have been done. The chief and his people, the fire chief and your people, because they were they were
going out constantly with various things. I mean, we were busier in that week than we've ever been.
it was just amazing. And it's amazing that it all came together. And I am just so proud the staff here, every last one of them and every last person that
was out working. Y'all are just great. And the people that made phone calls and took care of.
I mean, it was it was just a great effort of everybody.
and a lot of citizens were involved in helping too.
and michael, even, you know, like was in tech, was in town and charging his phone with his
grandchild motor car or razor, what do you call those?
little rc car. Little rc car. That's the only way we had to charge phones up.
I mean, amazing. But everybody did a great job.
but we need to know, again, a date that's available where we can sit down and talk about
disaster debriefing, what worked, what didn't work, what we need to change, what we need
to keep the same or enhance. So, again, if you can send dates on that, that would be helpful.
before we forget everything.
that would be great if possible, if everybody's. Staff is was going to go over during winter storm down here, but staff and myself, we've
sat down and went over pretty much the priority. List that what we think happened.
what failed, what didn't, what worked, what didn't. So I was going to talk about that here just a minute.
ok, ok, that would be good. I just don't want them to get off our radar and all of a sudden it's august and we forgot
everything we knew, you know, wouldn't be good.
ok, so now we are at [inaudible].
an emergency communication committee and I'm not sure if council
member abraham. Oh, it's going to be a team effort here just gonna tag team.
but I just want to say something just real quickly, because luke is going to talk pretty
much about the next two topics, but I just want to say thank you to our entire city team.
gary, grant, all our chiefs, chief chef, chief brooks, luke, patty, everyone here,
because I remember I mean, those were some pretty, pretty scary times, I think, for our
city. And I know that, you know what phone calls the council members could have made to
our local I mean, to our state and federal representatives.
I think it was just a just an absolutely successful team effort that we you know, we
worked together to keep our city from going into what could have been basically 48 hours
without power. I remember getting that phone call from representative taylor saying you
might as well just tell your residents that they're looking at 48 hours of no power.
and so just how everything just worked together, I'm just I'm really it says a lot about
our city. And the one thing that I learned from all of this is that we are basically an
island on our own on this. I mean, the state's not coming.
the county's not coming. It doesn't matter what they promise. We're still waiting on generators.
and I just my hats off to all of you guys for everything that you did to keep our
residents, especially our vulnerable residents. That's what we were worried about the most.
we had a lot of medical residents who relied on machines and things just to stay alive.
and we're luckily I never I haven't heard of any reports of any loss of life or any
anything serious in that sense. I know of other cities who had I know an example of one particular individual, one of my
coworkers, neighbor actually had a c pap machine and they were out without power and he
died that following day. So I'm so glad as a city we were able to keep that one of the things that we unexpectedly
had to deploy was ever bridge. Nowhere in the in the trial or the testing phase of it up until now.
and, you know, we just made the executive decision to go ahead and deploy it.
and a lot of residents were able to get on. And I know that we had some that had issues with it.
I know that luke worked diligently to try to get the kinks taken care of.
and I think going forward, we're going to try to get, you know, maybe a little checklist
of how to log on. And I think you can talk more about that. And that way we can have all our residents.
we want all our residents to, you know, get into the app in order to get that app on
their phones or wherever they can so that we can, you know, have a more streamlined
communication process in the event of something like this in the future.
so I'll turn it over to luke. Thank you, diana.
basically what you can do, I kind of share my screen. I must share it with michael. I think it's going to go?
ok. What you can do here on the city's website, you can come down to the ever bridge
alerts. We did realize after the deployment that we had labeled the residents
side and the employee side the same name. So that was why there was a difference.
you coun't when people were calling up, ask what was the difference was we were working on two different sides of the system and we didn't realize we had done that.
so what you can do here is going to that site, click on the link, hit sign up, and you
can automatically it'll prompt you for your information, username, first name, last name,
password, registration, email, and then you can create your account through that process.
this will be able to give you traffic if we have any issues with traffic, weather events,
any water boil, anything like that, we can highlight an area on the map.
I think many of you saw that the last time we went over this with the program.
so this system will be heavily used. Unfortunately, when we made the executive decision to use it, was it two weeks ago now?
I didn't realize if you close out of the app right after sending that, it automatically stops the dissemination of the information.
so we've got that kink worked out. It was something we had not experienced like that.
so we learned you can't just swipe up and swipe to the right to just get out of the app
after you do it. So from this point on, we should be doing this. One thing we'd like you to do, if you have, you can please send and other residents in
town, if you have family, have them use your address. If there you have loved ones that are wanting to know what was happening to you in your
area, send that send that link to them and have them register as we get more people
opting in. We want to use this as a tool for our residents, especially with severe
weather season coming up, we want to make sure you're getting the warnings and the watches and everything going out with that severe weather and all, chief?
I think one of the questions I've been asking maybe you have is can you belong to two
cities at the same time? Because. You should be able to.
it allows you to put in multiple addresses, from what I understand.
yeah. And there's also an app you can get on the android. It's ever bridge you can go on the either android or apple store and you can get it at
any of those places. So it does work pretty good. Denton county uses this.
we get weather updates all the time from denton county.
exactly everything geo fence. Yeah, with the particular person works for the city of garland.
and they wanted to know because they were already signed up in garland. Could they also sign up in parker because they reside in parker.
winter storm here. Why don't you just go right. Ok, first of all, gary, his guys did a magnificent job.
I think we were within about 15 minutes of losing our water system is four minutes.
yeah. Every time I talk to him, I it's a little bit lower, but it it's four minutes.
yeah. We had pipes freezing in the water tower.
we had valves frozen shut, open.
we were using propane torches to basically get things unfrozen and keep the water moving.
had that we had not been able to do that, we probably would have been one of those cities
under the boil water notice. They've ran loads and loads of diesel to our generating system at the pumps.
even we hot wired the scada system at one point just so we could know what was going on
with the scada system. With the towers, we couldn't figure out the gauges were frozen.
so we had no way of knowing what our levels were in there with the scada system down too.
so we had to get. What's the scada system? The scada system is our electronic management of how we flow the
water through town, kicks on the pumps, shows us what it's basically like a float in the
water tower, lets us know what our levels are so it knows when to kick on the pumps.
we had no clue what we had going on at that point. So we've got all that kind of figured out.
grant came up here, I think they ran extension cords from fire to get the server going
and his computer going so we could at least get payroll done and checks ap checks done
during that week. I know chief and myself, we were over where we live.
there was no power. At least I didn't have power for six days.
and I had to go move in with my parents. And I was still running, trying to run two cell phones, keeping in touch with all these
guys. And everything they were doing came in. We kind of got everything squared away.
we don't we are going to have some expenses. We are turning some of we are turning that over to fema.
we sat through the class last week. We sat through the fema kickoff meeting.
so it looks like it's going to be a seventy five twenty five match. Fema's paying for seventy five.
we'd have to pick up the twenty five percent and that includes overtime, fuel, all those
different things that we had to use for the storm. So we'll be submitting all that stuff, staff's currently going through there determining
what's actually was used for the storm and what wasn't used for the storm. So we can get reimbursement on those funds.
I'm trying to think here. Anything else we found out?
I think the biggest thing we found out is we need diesel, lots of it.
we did have a resident, I should mention this.
mic] and who else we had the diesel.
I'm trying to think what else. Oh, yes, generators.
well, I'm going to hold my comments on that.
the one thing we did notice with the city is we do need a generator other than just the
fire department to run police public works and city hall in storm events like this and
also to keep the tower water tower operational. At that same time.
hand for three days. That seems kind of to be our issue is every storm we have, we need fuel, at least for the
first three days before things can get up and going again. And then seems to be the issue this time, too.
I mean, it's bad, when buc-ee's is out of gasoline and you can't find it anywhere.
I also want to mention the roads. I mean, that was that was.
that was amazing what you guys did for the paving the city roads, even roads that didn't really belong to the city.
and I think that made a huge impact because I know that there were residents that had to
leave because they didn't have power. And so, you know, at least with the roads being paved as they were with all snow and ice
gone. I know that was at least comforting for some people that they wouldn't have to, you
know, at least risk their life and limb trying to get out of here. Now, once they hit the plano mark, you know, then it was going to.
yeah, yeah. They're on their own. It was disappointing. At least through the city, I think it was
oh, you know, we did parer road which is txdot [inaudible].
and [inaudible] and, you know, you know, what was done was done by gary and his guys.
and it's just awesome. Yes. I just can't say enough.
yeah, ok, and the only other issue and we're going to have to talk about this is
that it's real hard to remote without power.
you know, we had most of our people were trying to work from home or actually were working
from home until they lost their power. Well, the phone systems on an offsite server.
it was just we couldn't get into our vpn connection here.
we're working on a workaround on that now. So we'll be able to do that in the future.
we'll do better. That was a learning. We're learning a lot.
ok, anything else? Ok, at this time, we have a donation to the city of parker for the benefit of the fire,
police and our city staff due to the covid-19, ok, on february 4th, 2021, jerry
durrow donated one hundred dollars in cash to the parker fire department.
we want to thank him very much for his generous donation.
and is there anything else?
oh, no. We're going to do that next time.
it's not worded. Ok, I have a question and this has to do with michael slaughter.
so listen up, michael. We're scheduled to go into an emergency executive session and I didn't
know if y'all want to go ahead and do that now or wait until michael could be with us
here in person. So let me know what y'all would like to do.
I say we wait. It's already 9:30.
I'm ok wait. Ok, is everybody good with that? Ok, then at this time we will if I can find my piece of paper.
we will adjourn.