[0:00] oh

[0:10] [Music]

[0:28] we have a forum we need to approve the minutes of the

[0:32] previous meetings we've got those in your packets

[0:36] are there any let's see [Music]

[0:57] no one against but i can tell all right good deal

[1:00] um all right via zoo uh

[1:03] mr david mendez is here joining us he's going to give us some

[1:08] uh talk to us about the packet they sent to us

[1:25] thank you mayor i hope you can hear me all right council members is this uh

[1:28] okay volume can you hear me all right

[1:33] can you guys hear okay no i can hear you all right mr memphis

[1:39] okay uh i'm gonna share is it okay if i share my screen

[1:44] yes you can go ahead and do that okay let me uh i'm gonna i'm gonna see if i

[1:49] can get this going here uh and uh let me know

[1:55] if you can see the front slide uh a slide that says initial assessment by a

[2:00] city of sea grave 2021 can you hear can you see that

[2:07] okay so uh uh council

[2:10] what i want to do this evening is a couple of different things with you i'm

[2:14] gonna i'm gonna try to cover three main points

[2:17] here uh about the city's redistricting

[2:20] and again i'm david mendez i'm with the bigger staff firm you probably remember

[2:24] me we we've visited before i i do some of your bond transaction work and i

[2:30] worked with dan and the mayor as we as we sold some bonds last year you're

[2:35] working with some of the other members of my firm right now to finish up the

[2:38] usda deal but every decade and this is my fourth cycle

[2:43] of doing these projects i started in the 1990 round but every decade as a census

[2:49] comes out we serve about 125 different county cities schools and colleges

[2:56] hospital districts others that have single member districts to help them

[3:00] realign their boundaries and so what we're going to do tonight is go over why

[3:05] the why why you the city of sea graves has that obligation

[3:10] what the census shows about the city of sea graves and then i'm going to propose

[3:15] a process whereby we're going to fix the the

[3:18] the imbalance that exists so uh if you'll bear with me and then i'll take

[3:23] questions on the back side because of the audio from your end i think uh i'm

[3:28] going to need uh dan to interpret because i i get a lot of feedback on the

[3:32] when you talk so i'm going to have dan give me the questions from you as we

[3:36] finish but here here's the the deal is you

[3:41] uh have uh uh what i'm what i'm what i'm doing

[3:45] tonight is presenting uh an initial assessment

[3:50] david just a second we're going to move closer

[3:53] to the microphone having trouble hearing it give us just a

[3:57] second okay the council's going to orient themselves

[4:01] a better look at the at the presentation david and to hear you better just a

[4:06] moment awesome okay

[4:17] maybe better off on this side [Music]

[4:31] okay i think we're in place david all right okay okay this is gonna be like a

[4:36] mini law lesson here for you guys and so uh but essentially what i'm going to do

[4:42] is tonight is this initial assessment i'm going to explain the problem i'm

[4:45] going to show you some guidelines and criteria that i want you to adopt that

[4:49] i'm going to recommend you adopt to make us go through the process easier i'm

[4:54] going to then and that's gonna allow us to develop a plan to solve the imbalance

[4:58] among the districts obtain some public input and then we can

[5:03] get to analyzing and adopting a final plan and so that's the in a nutshell

[5:08] what we're gonna do but i want to explain why we're doing redistricting

[5:12] you guys are the legislature of the city of sea graves you as a council make the

[5:19] laws that apply the ordinances that apply to the citizenry there and back

[5:25] in the 80s or whenever you converted to single member districts what what the

[5:30] the that process of electing each council

[5:34] member from a single member district caused you to be subject to the one

[5:39] person one vote requirement and i'm going to explain that here in a minute

[5:43] and so i'm going to explain that how one person one vote works and then why the

[5:48] voting rights act and these other constitutional law cases like shaw

[5:53] versus reno and section 5 of the voting rights act apply to us in certain

[5:58] respects and so the reason that we're redistricting and

[6:02] we're looking at the census in the first place is because you like the

[6:07] legislature make the laws for the citizenry and the law says that you

[6:13] folks must come from equal size districts if one of the council

[6:17] districts has too much population a lot more

[6:20] population than the next one then effectively the people that are in that

[6:25] overpopulated council district are under represented at the council they don't

[6:30] get as much bang for their political buck

[6:34] or bang for their for the buck by voting a council member to the chamber because

[6:41] they only get to pick one representative plus the mayor to the council and a

[6:46] district that has few people and the fewer people in it gets to elect the

[6:51] same thing so that those people in the underpopulated district actually have a

[6:55] greater voice at sea graves government and so what we want to do is have each

[7:00] of the districts be balanced and so i have an overly simplified example here

[7:06] of how this works this is a town that has four districts it has 40 000 people

[7:11] and just for simplicity uh the

[7:15] the the population in the census was forty thousand so each district has to

[7:20] have ten thousand people and in this example then uh the district one has

[7:26] eleven thousand people so it's ten percent overpopulated district d has

[7:31] only 8 000 people so it's 2 000 people underpopulated and so it's 20 over and

[7:38] so the maximum deviation the way the port looks at and it is at one a and b

[7:45] are 30 percent out of balance and that's too much difference between one district

[7:50] and the other so what we're required to do

[7:53] is change the boundaries of the districts to bring them under 10

[7:59] deviation and we'll show you how how that looks for sea grapes here in a few

[8:03] minutes but once you're triggered it and i and your

[8:07] city the census shows that you've triggered this 10 percent you're over 10

[8:12] deviation then once we've triggered it we got to look at the voting rights act

[8:17] because the law the voting rights act says

[8:21] that if we have districts from which the minority members elected whether it's a

[8:26] hispanic group of citizens that make the majority in

[8:29] the district or a black group of

[8:33] voters that make up the bulk of the district we cannot crack or pack that

[8:39] population as we redraw the boundaries we want to

[8:42] make sure we protect those groups to keep their voting strength up in the

[8:48] in the districts and so that's a lot of of the work of this

[8:52] now the flip side of that process is the law says we can use the voting rights

[8:58] act to protect those minorities but that's it that's the only reason we can

[9:02] look at race to make sure we've narrowly tailored our solution to make sure we

[9:07] didn't uh we didn't uh adversely impact them under the under the voting rights

[9:12] law but then we move on to dealing with the stuff that you're interested in

[9:16] which is uh

[9:18] which territory do i serve which potholes and streets do am i responsible

[9:23] for or which uh parks am i responsible for in my district and that's what the

[9:28] bulk of redistricting has to be about so um uh the courts have said that for us

[9:33] to navigate this tightrope between race and the regular business of

[9:41] drawing of doing city work we should use criteria to draw the districts that have

[9:47] these kind of factors as i've got up here on the board identifiable

[9:51] boundaries we want to make sure we don't draw

[9:54] the the districts down back alleys or property lines that nobody can see but

[10:00] that we use identifiable boundaries like the streets and roads in the community

[10:05] or you know different kinds of geographical factors like that if you

[10:09] have streams or things like that that flow through the city we also want to

[10:13] make sure that we keep the neighborhoods together if you if your neighborhood is

[10:17] what elected you as a council member then you know what territory

[10:22] your your voters come from and we want to make sure that as we redraw the line

[10:26] that we don't draw out your constituency so that maintaining communities of

[10:31] interest is important we want to we can't use whole voting precincts here in

[10:36] sea graves because every voting precinct is too big

[10:40] to encompass one council district probably so but we'll try to take those

[10:45] into consideration so that if a voter votes in precinct one for all other

[10:49] purposes and they can vote for council members in in a council particular

[10:54] council district we'll try to keep them together if we can

[10:58] i'm not sure how that works and we'll work there in a small town but we'll try

[11:02] to fit it we also want to work from the plan and the districts you currently

[11:07] have so we don't want to start throw out all the districts the way they are we

[11:10] want to work from where you got elected and just tweak it to the minimum extent

[11:15] necessary to bring you back into that 10 deviation

[11:19] we want to make sure the districts follow the census and are of equal size

[11:23] that they're compact and contiguous and don't look uh bizarre-shaped or with

[11:30] fingers uh sticking out to go gather a particular person or draw somebody out

[11:35] of the district the other things is we want to keep each of you within your

[11:40] current district and your current constituency to the extent possible and

[11:44] again we want to make sure we don't adversely affect anybody under the

[11:47] voting rights so i have a policy i gave that that my team

[11:52] gave to dan and he'll present that at the end of

[11:56] this for adoption but it basically adopts those rules you're going to say

[12:00] we're going to follow those rules when we draw

[12:03] so the other policy that i have provided

[12:07] him with is a policy for public participation and to the extent we can

[12:13] we got to do this pretty quick because we've got to be done by the end of the

[12:16] year but certainly by the middle of january

[12:19] but to the extent that we draw a plan we want to put it up on the city website or

[12:23] post it inside city hall so that folks can come look at it and give you some

[12:28] feedback and see and make sure that they give you uh guidance if they have or

[12:33] concerns that they may have about the plan you draw and so

[12:37] i have a policy for that that that uh dan has there that says that people will

[12:44] uh that we're gonna make this available that people can provide comment that

[12:48] we're gonna have a public hearing at one of the drawing sessions and people can

[12:52] provide comment by the time we finish that drawing that uh public hearing and

[12:57] so we'll talk more about that when we get to the actual policy but i i i'll uh

[13:01] i just wanted to give you lay that framework i'm ready now to kind of go

[13:05] into your council district this is the shape

[13:10] if you will of your current council districts very compactly drawn and what

[13:14] we did is we took these territories and the city limit lines that dan provided

[13:20] and we applied the 2020 census to them and that's what's in your report

[13:25] is this sheet really kind of is the key

[13:30] to the process so what it shows is that the the population of the city

[13:38] is now 2154

[13:42] 2154. if we divide that among the five council districts the the ideal size

[13:49] of each district is just 431 persons and so

[13:54] that if you look at the current population of

[13:58] district 1 the way it's configured it has a 403 people in it it's uh just a

[14:04] couple uh you know with 28 people under the

[14:08] the ideal size and it's six percent underpopulated

[14:12] district number two at 427 persons it's almost exactly it's

[14:16] within a four persons of the ideal size district

[14:21] number three is overpopulated it has 499 people so it's got 172 men here i mean i

[14:29] mean 70 too many so uh

[14:33] district number four at 369 is is about the same size under

[14:39] under the ideal uh five

[14:42] and uh district number five uh is uh uh again at five percent overpopulated

[14:50] with about 20 people or so over

[14:54] so it's fairly easy

[14:57] to fix the the population and you will notice

[15:03] that the predominant the the reason i have so so we're using

[15:08] this total population to to to redistrict

[15:12] but i have here some information about the racial and ethnic makeup of the

[15:18] citizenry and uh 73 of the citizenry in sea graves are hispanic so 70 so you can

[15:26] see that all of the districts are majority hispanic third time uh they

[15:31] have uh each of the districts has some anglo population uh ranging from a

[15:38] low of 12 to about 30 percent uh from one district to another but that's a

[15:44] that's the second largest group african americans comprise uh about five percent

[15:50] of the population of the city and so each of the districts has between

[15:54] uh three and ten percent of the population two and a half and ten

[15:57] percent of the population but so there really aren't going to be any

[16:02] voting rights issues of any significant nature because every

[16:07] district you draw is majority minority it's their they're

[16:12] all minority districts so we can concentrate on just getting this

[16:16] in balance states and it is a very very minor set of

[16:22] changes probably moving a city block here and there

[16:26] uh to make the the changes work

[16:29] now the charts that i gave you have a lot of

[16:32] other detail but it's kind of difficult it's not very meaningful like for

[16:37] example i provided a chart which shows the hispanic concentrations and almost

[16:42] every block has hispanic population in it so it's it's

[16:46] like that likewise if you look at the

[16:50] african-american concentrations they're spread out all

[16:53] over the city almost every block has some but uh with a couple of blocks

[16:58] within the city that have a little bit larger population in a big city this

[17:02] would matter a lot in c graves it really comes down to a simple simple math

[17:09] problem i i'm going to back up to this slide and this really kind of tells

[17:16] us what how minuscule the fixing of this problem is

[17:22] we probably can fix uh uh if we can find a city block

[17:28] uh to add population to district one from one of its neighbors let's say if

[17:34] it joins three uh you're going to be able to fix it with by adding 20 or 30

[17:40] people and it'll be close to the ideal size and by that adjustment uh but

[17:46] district number two you don't even have to

[17:48] mess with if you don't if you don't want to so the primary change is going to be

[17:53] between three and four once almost exactly the same amount over

[17:58] populated that the other one's under so if

[18:02] uh district number three has 60 people too many

[18:07] this district number four needs those 60 people and we can fix the imbalance

[18:12] right there uh you know five is again a fix of uh uh 10

[18:19] or 20 people so very very straightforward and

[18:24] but you have to do this you have to go

[18:27] through this process in order

[18:30] to to

[18:32] not get sued under the uh one person one vote before

[18:37] you hold your next round of elections so i've done this presentation for you

[18:42] tonight i'll tell you i did a meeting last

[18:46] week in montgomery county they have 650

[18:52] 000 people it's one of the fastest growing counties

[18:55] in the country but uh they they were

[18:59] 11 their maximum deviation was 11

[19:04] so i met with them and i had actually in that case set up a drawing session with

[19:09] them at the same meeting because we knew the balance was very small and

[19:14] uh i uh we they took the commissioners told

[19:17] me move that one precinct over there from from precinct one to precinct four

[19:22] and we're done and i did that and they're going to adopt that tomorrow in

[19:27] commissioner's court and be done with this process and frankly if

[19:32] dan and i had had more time i probably could have organized something like that

[19:36] with you all here but i didn't know if you could hear me well enough

[19:41] and we could do this uh if the if your setup worked well enough there but

[19:47] what i'm going to propose today is that dan and i get together and set up a work

[19:52] session where you guys can sit closer into the machine you get good

[19:57] audio i hope you're getting good audio of this and i will have my computer guy

[20:02] instead of us having this presentation that i have up i'll actually put up the

[20:06] map of

[20:09] sea graves on the screen and you can tell me which block you want

[20:14] me to move from your district into the neighbors district so that we can get

[20:18] this fixed and we can have i bet you it would take us

[20:22] 20 minutes 30 minutes of time sitting here at you guys over there at

[20:27] your desk and me here at my desk and we could fix the imbalance and you could

[20:32] have the hold it as a public meeting like this

[20:36] and then the public can watch us fix the imbalance and then you could adopt it at

[20:40] a the next city council meeting you could you could have a public

[20:45] hearing after we drew it and or before the

[20:48] council meeting so that in case anybody wanted to give you any any feedback

[20:54] dan told me that you all have a regular uh council meeting on the

[21:00] 13th and i bet you that between here and

[21:03] there uh working around thanksgiving that we

[21:06] could get this done so that's what i have for you guys tonight the first if

[21:12] you uh first i want to answer any questions you

[21:15] have and then second i would like to see if council is ready to

[21:20] uh consider and adopt those two policies that i described the gaia dynastic

[21:26] criteria so that we can get in that so that dan and i can get to work on a on a

[21:31] work session schedule for you do we have any questions

[21:36] folks no

[21:39] all right there are no questions david

[21:44] um you know

[21:46] uh considering the level of imbalance

[21:50] that's there you know is there if i put the map

[21:55] and let me see if i can get a good uh a bet if you had a few minutes tonight and

[22:00] i put up a good sized map would it be worth us having a little bit of

[22:05] discussion i don't know you got who's in one and who's in two and three four five

[22:09] but if you went around the table a little bit

[22:12] could you guys maybe we could get this thing moving by just getting a little

[22:17] input from you all about you know hey my district has

[22:21] uh too much population

[22:23] maybe we could look at this city block or that city block and then dan and i

[22:27] could take some notes and maybe we could kind of get some of the work started on

[22:33] do you guys want to do that we got the maps

[22:39] you're ready you want to try it

[22:42] sure okay let me uh pull up a different i'm going to pull up a different

[22:49] uh screen

[22:51] do you want to go

[22:57] yeah and if you all pull your maps out and then let me let me get my world doc

[23:01] stuff

[23:09] i'm going to stop sharing for a second and pull up a different deal here

[23:13] [Music]

[23:22] [Music]

[23:30] [Music] is

[23:43] [Music]

[23:49] okay and lorraine is three

[23:52] oh you're mine oh i own you now

[23:58] reuben five deborah's two charles is one

[24:07] so so let me let me see if i can make this

[24:12] work for us here this

[24:14] is the chart that shows your current imbalance

[24:19] so maybe if we start for example with

[24:23] district one and if you help me on your side of it i want to go put up

[24:28] the picture of the council districts here in a second but thinking about

[24:32] district number one that it needs about

[24:37] uh it it's 30 it's 28

[24:42] people underpopulated so we need a city block

[24:47] or something like that maybe to move in that regard

[24:51] out of coming into district number one and let's when you

[24:57] look at district number one it abuts three two and five

[25:03] and if we look at

[25:06] uh just to make this simple i'm going back if you look at the chart the the

[25:12] guy the the district that has the population

[25:17] uh that is almost identical

[25:20] that that to what one needs is

[25:24] five district five has essentially about the

[25:29] same number about 25 people or so

[25:33] over populated so i'm just taking the those two districts which above each

[25:38] other and for example one way to solve it is

[25:43] along the edge down here on the south side of the map and i'm going to try to

[25:48] zoom into that part of the map here and

[25:52] this is not a live map you know i'm just got a pdf i've got the same thing you

[25:56] guys do over there but what i'm going to do is

[26:01] just show you how easy this is to fit so down here in

[26:06] this by the park on uh near the chamber of commerce

[26:12] if there was a block in

[26:16] along avenue j

[26:20] and between 5th and 2nd street that we might

[26:23] consider adding into for example district number

[26:28] one uh it there might be sufficient

[26:31] population in a couple of these blocks to

[26:35] get get

[26:38] get number one straightened out

[26:45] any thoughts in that regard or and certainly

[26:48] you can also see that likewise district number three a

[26:53] budget and it's got 60 extra people in it that need to be that that that it's

[26:59] going to have to shed some of so you could

[27:03] look at any of this area right up here between 12th street

[27:08] and avenue k uh and

[27:13] and add some of that territory into number one and fix the problem

[27:22] does that make sense i mean [Music]

[27:27] so we need to move out of three and five and put in one and four right okay

[27:33] well i mean and i'm just suggesting i mean i you you can take it from any of

[27:38] these because look look you've got options for one yeah numbers three and

[27:42] five are give you some some some places you can add

[27:55] [Music]

[28:02] going down to the bottom david please yeah and one thing i can do

[28:08] guys that would really be make it easy for you all is i can print this map and

[28:13] i can tell you exactly i can put a number

[28:16] on each of these city blocks and say this one has five people this one has

[28:20] ten and just show you you know exactly what the census shows

[28:25] for each block and then you guys could in the in the privacy of your own home

[28:30] each of you kind of look at the map and say well you know i can i can see you

[28:36] know sharing that territory with the district five or three or whatever and i

[28:40] could send that along to y'all and do your homework and then we could when we

[28:44] put this up on the screen for you all we we would have it live and we'd run

[28:48] the numbers here and you could see what the the actual numbers were on each

[28:53] district when we modified it david let's do that

[28:58] we all seem to like it if you do that

[29:01] okay that'd be pretty cool and yeah i think this would be a very simple

[29:06] exercise and i think you'll find it enlightening i think the public will

[29:10] appreciate you know hey well i get some voice over in district one or three or

[29:15] whatever you know but uh but that's what i had for you all

[29:20] tonight and and then and i could send you circulate that to you all and then

[29:24] you all can tell me when you're going to get together and we can get to the next

[29:27] step okay thank you david

[29:31] wilson you're welcome need anything else for me tonight

[29:35] well you need that amendment are you we need to pass the permission to sign

[29:40] those documents yeah i i think mayor if you guys are comfortable with what i

[29:45] presented in the process that i've outlined i recommend that you adopt the

[29:50] policy that that i've provided to uh and let me put that slide back up

[29:56] if you have a moment let me just pull that back up here

[29:59] uh well i'm gonna pull the actual policy up if you're good with that let me do

[30:03] that yeah if you have a second

[30:08] yeah let me let me actually pull the slide up that i want you to adopt i mean

[30:13] the actual document that is how it looks

[30:45] so um let me know if you can see hold on let

[30:50] me move this over to this can you see that uh order number blank

[30:54] that i've got right there yes okay so here's the critical part of the order as

[31:00] i mentioned when we were going through the presentation section number one says

[31:04] to the extent practical we're going to use easily identifiable geographic

[31:10] boundaries to draw the disk so we're going to go down city streets we're

[31:14] going to you know work around the parks and other

[31:17] major therapists we're going to have communities of interest maintained in a

[31:22] single district so if your church group all goes to one church or if you have a

[31:27] neighborhood that is comprised of a certain

[31:30] set of people you need to let us know that we're not splitting your

[31:33] neighborhood you know where that these are your your people and then council

[31:38] districts should be composed of whole body pieces i i am fairly certain we're

[31:42] not going to be able to stay within whole voting precincts dan can correct

[31:45] me but i think you're probably the whole town's comprised of one or two

[31:49] uh election precincts in the county isn't that right dan

[31:53] just one i believe since

[31:57] the county precinct happening

[32:08] the county to where we're just in precinct one now right that's what i

[32:12] thought so you're going to be in one election preaching so number three

[32:15] doesn't really we're not going to be able to practically avoid that but

[32:19] that's a that's a policy that the courts like to see you adopt also is that that

[32:24] we're going to have uh kept the basic

[32:30] single member districts the way they are we're just going to change them to the

[32:34] minimum extent necessary to get the numbers straightened out to get them in

[32:38] balance that's number four that we're going to configure them a

[32:43] relatively equal population we're going to use the census and i'm

[32:47] i'm telling you we're using the census data for this so we don't have any other

[32:51] data to use other than the 2020 census that each of the districts is going to

[32:55] stay compact you have some of the most compact districts i've ever seen and i

[32:59] want to make sure that when we finish they're going to continue to look nice

[33:03] square chunky districts we're not going to they're not

[33:07] going to have lines going all over the town uh and then

[33:11] they're gonna be uh we're gonna make sure that you can uh that we're that

[33:15] your voters stay in your district you if you are uncomfortable that you're losing

[33:20] some of your tried and true voters and keep getting

[33:24] you elected you need to make your voice heard on council to make

[33:29] sure your district stays with your voters and then we want to avoid any

[33:34] racial gerrymandering i don't see how we we get

[33:38] into any racial issue everybody in town the the predominant groups as we've

[33:43] identified or all over the city so whatever changes we make are going to

[33:47] affect everybody the same way and that's a policy this is kind of out

[33:52] follows those little blocks that i had on the powerpoint so that's the first

[33:56] one there

[34:02] and if you all you can adopt it by making a motion in a second to adopt

[34:07] that policy and then then can informalize it for your signature

[34:12] okay while he's looking can i have a motion guys

[34:16] one of you i've got a motion for room in a second

[34:19] from cindy all in favor

[34:23] okay where are you next

[34:25] here's the second one mayor so these are guidelines for in case there's a person

[34:30] in the public that wants to provide you with some input and comments and what

[34:34] this policy says after the whereas is is that if somebody wants the

[34:39] the city is going to go through the process and

[34:43] if somebody wants to provide you with input they should

[34:48] propose plans in writing and that we can read that are legible so i don't want

[34:52] them on the back of the napkin or something where we can't read them so

[34:56] uh that we they need to give them to you in a quick in a clear fully articulated

[35:04] uh manner they need to show the total population voting age population of the

[35:10] different races and all and this is something that we want to make sure if

[35:14] somebody wants to make a suggestion that they

[35:17] uh that they use the same data we're using and we can tell them what we have

[35:21] and most people if they're into providing you with this kind of input

[35:25] are going to have this kind of debt we want to make sure that anybody who gives

[35:29] you a plan or an example that they want you to consider redraws the whole city

[35:34] we don't want somebody to come and say well i want to run for office in council

[35:38] member not district number three so i'd like you to draw it like this so i can

[35:42] get elected because i can get my mother-in-law in there and all my

[35:45] relatives you know so you don't want to you you

[35:48] want somebody to draw all five districts and that's what number three is about

[35:53] there the next one is that plans will conform to the criteria that you adopted

[35:57] so that you have to follow those criteria you just voted if you want any

[36:02] everybody else to follow them as well and then they should if they just want

[36:06] to give you comments instead of writing a plan they just they need to do the

[36:10] comments in writing and

[36:13] uh what we're asking people uh is to provide those

[36:17] uh to provide their name and address an

[36:20] email if they have one so we can follow up with them

[36:26] uh to get back more feedback if we need more information for them and finally

[36:30] number seven says that all comments and proposed

[36:34] plans will be submitted to the council by the close of the public hearing and

[36:39] that public hearing that i'm talking about is a public hearing either right

[36:43] before you adopt or right at the last work session ben and i need to figure

[36:48] out where to schedule your public hearing but basically those are the

[36:53] rules in case somebody wants to participate with the council and say

[36:56] i've got some ideas council members here's how i want to draw it and they

[37:00] can give you that so that's the basic blueprint and you can add things to this

[37:04] if you would like to make it more liberal i

[37:08] mean less less difficult or more flexible or however you want to do it

[37:11] but that's that's what my cities have been adopting generally

[37:19] okay i need a motion to adopt this order

[37:25] i have a motion from cindy second from lorena all in favor

[37:30] aye unanimous

[37:33] thank you david mayor council members it's been a

[37:36] pleasure i'm gonna go cook dinner now so

[37:41] good for you anyway but uh dan and i will be back to

[37:44] you shortly with the map with the population so you can do some homework

[37:50] and then we'll schedule a work session or two for you to get through this

[37:54] process i look forward to seeing you guys then

[37:59] thank you david good night good evening guys bye i'm going to log

[38:03] out dan

[38:10] and i got to stop sharing i think

[38:13] let me see if i can figure out how to do all that

[38:18] [Music]

[38:30] might take

[38:36] [Music]

[38:54] [Music]

[38:57] i mean it is just a simple matter

[39:01] moving a couple of walks and this

[39:04] should not impact any of the great but it does not look

[39:07] like it impacts the racial balance of our districts

[39:11] um we just need to balance industries

[39:19] from 16th to 16th

[39:32] all right we'll meet on the 18th and then we have to have a second one to

[39:37] meet the following monday or tuesday that's thanksgiving

[40:08] that kind of information since i get it from him

[40:12] i'll sure okay all right so i have i have a motion

[40:16] that we uh

[40:20] set the date for the initial drive session

[40:22] the final is redistricting on the 18th at 6 30 here

[40:27] and it'll be a zoom meeting

[40:31] okay all right i have a motion

[40:36] i see ascending i heard a voice marina okay

[40:40] and then uh all in favor okay

[40:47] so it's 18. all right all right now we're going to consider and take

[40:52] action as necessary um it's your turn bring that chair up

[40:57] here i've got to help you dance recently had knee surgery

[41:12] [Music]

[41:15] so talk to us about texas communities group

[41:24] um

[41:27] [Music]

[41:38] i've been with the law firm for 38 years

[41:59] [Music]

[42:13] and so i was bouncing ideas off him

[42:17] for some time when we started

[42:24] we kind of did a pilot project for about a year

[42:43] property service contract one is trust properties which are properties that

[42:47] have gone to taxable votes did not sell for the minimum bid and so

[42:52] now you all know what your school district accounting and trust

[42:57] trust properties kind of double negative you don't get tax revenue on them

[43:16] [Music]

[43:38] after we started texas communities through here looking for ways we get a

[43:42] lot of calls from city management and hey what can you do to help us with

[43:45] this problem uh it's vague and abandoned or

[43:48] dilapidated structure and we notice that if we put taxes on

[43:53] can you sell

[43:56] well we would go through the process and generally the average cost of the

[44:02] tax law to report fee by the time you get the sale it's about

[44:06] eleven hundred

[44:14] and a lot of times those properties because they

[44:19] were bad

[44:24] [Music] and so it was a cumbersome way a costly

[44:32] way of going networking and so tcg came from that experience

[44:37] and one of the things we do is work with city city staff in identifying

[44:42] properties that need a tax requirement for real property taxes

[45:16] and what that's designed to do is those properties where

[45:20] maybe a family ended some years ago they died no probation

[45:25] [Music]

[45:44] required

[45:54] and so many of our towns

[46:11] situation is we fully

[46:27] uh maybe they had to lift that property

[46:30] seven eight years or something longer

[46:35] and that's something i think but it's been very effective

[46:40] [Music]

[46:47] so it's been a really good program that without doing a lot on city staff

[46:54] um going through a list we try to put it in certain division

[46:59] or somebody uh published works or

[47:04] police or accounts the textbook allows for anyone's

[47:26] [Music]

[47:37] [Music] he lives in odessa now i think you know

[48:03] is [Music]

[48:18] uh

[48:32] properties we've created an online bid system it's still a single bid process

[48:39] you would still have approval over every prop property episode

[48:45] city would have to prove

[48:52] [Music]

[49:01] uh we put out signage we tried to do a lot of advertisements

[49:06] but not very many people know about trust properties

[49:10] i've ever bought

[49:14] two houses

[49:28] and what that means is that properties might have sold for 200 or 500

[49:33] we feel like we can give you 400 or a thousand

[49:37] in addition to that we've gone in and done your local

[49:41] agreements because not only does the city own the property

[49:46] so your own property ownership

[49:50] taxes clean up and maintenance

[49:54] uh what we've done with the international agreement

[50:06] and what that does is all the other entities without having to

[50:10] check out their

[50:19] [Music]

[50:51] we started this you know we live out here in west texas

[50:55] and some of these properties

[51:04] but it's worked and i think our advertising thank you

[51:12] so when we started this i hope we can i think we can we're going

[51:16] to [Music]

[51:19] be

[51:27] [Music]

[51:33] previously

[51:42] [Music]

[51:48] and

[51:52] [Music]

[51:58] um

[52:20] [Music]

[52:31] [Music]

[52:42] you know i feel like if we own it

[52:59] uh communication is a big deal um

[53:03] if we know what property is bothering you

[53:07] your community we can tell you something

[53:12] um so we have a phone app that we make available for android and apple users

[53:17] stand in front of the property take a picture of it it's

[53:22] it comes to us it tells the gps address gives you a

[53:26] comment section

[53:39] [Music] ownership

[53:53] you know we've got five years

[54:18] [Music]

[54:21] there's less work for your coding credit enforcement where they can concentrate a

[54:25] little bit throw their resources at because some of those properties where

[54:30] the owner is not existing really hard to do

[54:34] they're not going to comply you can stay

[54:47] um

[55:21] for some reason if we were unable to create that they're not responsible for

[55:26] any shortfall so say we go through we acquire some properties and turn

[55:32] around we're going to sell

[55:42] so it's designed to do a little bit more work

[55:52] uh

[56:01] [Music]

[56:13] so that's what's before

[56:27] is

[56:36] if we know something that whatever you guys can still say no

[56:41] but we're not

[56:45] [Music]

[56:54] and both of them will talk to me about mobile controllers they know

[57:00] [Music]

[57:09] but there are many of our flighted properties

[57:15] have been ignoring us our public works folks and our judge has

[57:19] been doing all sorts of things like them to

[57:23] do code enforcement actions to clean

[57:37] um

[57:53] it to the right person how long does that losses take

[57:57] that property has been making for i'm 42

[58:00] probably boys one more than a year and

[58:04] we'll get back back so that is a great question and that's why

[58:12] if you look at a piece of property where um there's

[58:16] say ownership is disease you know everybody knew him yeah

[58:43] [Music] we have to find as many as possible

[58:48] potential

[59:01] and you might end up having to serve a personal service

[59:06] january 11 12 different individuals you would cost about a hundred dollars

[59:13] per show for a cycle and

[59:16] the costs feed up the the ability to do that

[59:20] what the real property tax is if we have somebody like yourself

[59:25] that says that property's been vacant for

[59:30] power long but as long as it's over the last 12 months

[59:34] we don't have to serve them with service personnel we post it in the communities

[59:40] we'll have it posted at the courthouse city hall

[59:57] website

[1:00:06] [Music] and so they move fast and so from the

[1:00:15] moment we filed that

[1:00:20] vacancy and applied for the warrant two to three

[1:00:23] months later

[1:00:26] and once it goes to sale you know the property owners

[1:00:29] their rent needs to pay the taxes they pay the taxes

[1:00:34] um we tell them it's a cleanup effort and

[1:00:37] you have these properties [Music]

[1:00:54] knowledge of the property it doesn't have to be a counterfeit

[1:00:58] it doesn't have to be a city staff person

[1:01:01] [Music] and if you know this this

[1:01:06] code section in the tax code came out of the

[1:01:10] metroplex in harris county

[1:01:16] um

[1:01:36] does look at each one's cleanup

[1:01:42] eyesores

[1:02:03] okay

[1:02:09] [Music]

[1:02:17] we go from the process

[1:02:32] and what it is is kind of those properties that have been forgotten

[1:02:37] and out of the economy basically nobody's paying taxes

[1:02:54] [Music]

[1:02:59] [Music]

[1:03:09] how many years i mean i personally have bought

[1:03:28] some of them you know are 15 years okay and some of them would just be a few

[1:03:33] years what what values

[1:03:39] uh

[1:03:46] [Music]

[1:03:53] one of the reasons is

[1:04:22] you don't see all the ones that don't go to sale you kind of see the

[1:04:27] [Music]

[1:04:39] and then like say if someone is not paid for five years did they just add that to

[1:04:45] it yeah

[1:04:56] um there's not a ton of that that's not

[1:05:01] in some sort of agreement or some sort of referral yeah

[1:05:06] [Music]

[1:05:11] um

[1:06:02] the person

[1:06:05] [Music]

[1:06:16] so i mean i didn't know how that worked

[1:06:31] but yeah have a certain figure like once it becomes a thousand dollars

[1:06:37] [Music]

[1:06:48] [Music]

[1:06:57] [Music]

[1:07:10] collected [Music]

[1:07:26] someone has you know her taxes say four thousand dollars a year versus

[1:07:34] five hundred dollars a year

[1:08:22] and

[1:08:31] uh

[1:08:36] [Music]

[1:08:44] because you know if it doesn't sell

[1:08:48] taxes get paid

[1:08:55] [Music] take these properties and do something

[1:08:58] with it [Music]

[1:09:17] we've executed some more

[1:09:26] uh out here kind of on the western side

[1:09:36] uh

[1:10:02] i made a notation on this contract for that last paragraph

[1:10:24] [Music]

[1:10:39] and uh

[1:10:48] [Music]

[1:10:59] [Music]

[1:11:04] thank you very much

[1:11:09] [Music]

[1:11:34] awarding an engineering contract related to the american

[1:11:37] wrestling plan

[1:11:40] [Music]

[1:11:48] west texas consultants [Music]

[1:11:51] i mean they were all fairly close points but in terms of familiarity with

[1:11:56] west texas water and the things we want him to try to do

[1:12:01] uh uh

[1:12:02] dean one and the sentence so i need your permission to sign

[1:12:07] resolution from secrets texas authorized professional service provider selection

[1:12:12] for broadband's local official recovery fund programs

[1:12:16] to the american rescue plan act of 2029 and we selected

[1:12:49] you have everybody's detailed reports i'm hoping you're finding those helpful

[1:12:55] to you a couple things i want to point out on what the chief of police can talk

[1:13:00] about government

[1:13:09] [Music] um

[1:13:15] [Music]

[1:13:23] [Music]

[1:13:31] so dan's gonna post it again and see if we can get some more money for it

[1:13:36] uh real quickly um

[1:13:49] [Music]

[1:13:57] this unit is one of the very last ones that's available

[1:14:02] they are having to transit in

[1:14:06] the ships

[1:14:16] [Music]

[1:14:26] several local uh leaderships

[1:14:31] again charges are usually the cheapest thing i

[1:14:36] picked up the rank from pick up to run about

[1:14:40] 50 to 60 000 and so

[1:14:44] you know i've talked to the mayor talking down a little bit

[1:14:47] uh my bill is

[1:14:56] it's going to cost us about um and it all depends on what you all

[1:15:00] want with anything that's on the side

[1:15:04] it's going to cost us about four to forty five hundred dollars

[1:15:21] [Music] everything

[1:15:32] [Music]

[1:15:35] um

[1:15:50] and so i talked about for me the mayor talked about didn't wrap

[1:15:55] uh i called uh

[1:15:59] and i called uh

[1:16:11] [Music]

[1:16:30] [Music]

[1:16:47] we signed the uh notice to proceed on the

[1:16:52] uh usda

[1:16:55] sewer infrastructure project starting this week

[1:16:58] by all accounts until they immediately refunded us on

[1:17:03] four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars

[1:17:06] so that's the money we hadn't encountered

[1:17:09] this year's we've got it and that money's available to establish

[1:17:21] [Music]

[1:17:27] so they're going to look at it tomorrow but the chief did an awful lot of work

[1:17:31] advantage got deals to

[1:17:34] make sure that track would all be proceeding and

[1:17:37] actually realizes more money than we expect so

[1:17:42] bernays i think he's gonna start using gun deals

[1:17:46] at some point here she's got some clean vehicles

[1:17:49] um i might be able to realize some money what i'm asking is for a motion to log

[1:17:54] in by its car and and to get it obviously

[1:17:59] fixed up with all the police stuff and whether you want to wrap it up

[1:18:18] [Music]

[1:18:21] well it's part of taking care of our capital

[1:18:34] [Music]

[1:18:55] [Music]

[1:19:06] buildings diligently as everybody knows and their report

[1:19:12] shows a number of things tagging yards et cetera et cetera

[1:19:17] i have met with ryan lawson 361 commissioner

[1:19:32] ryan has three houses if you guys have previously condemned about your address

[1:19:41] he's hauling dirt right now he's usually always required to do that

[1:19:45] but [Music]

[1:19:47] they're going to come down before four years in so that's the

[1:19:51] business and then what what at least to me sort of the

[1:19:55] exciting news is that chase music has given us permission to tear down

[1:20:00] the motel um not the redwood park redwood park

[1:20:05] says that's the old cafe apartment with the other stuff

[1:20:09] so he signed the documents what i need is a motion for you guys

[1:20:22] [Music] is

[1:20:30] [Music]

[1:20:37] [Music] right

[1:20:54] [Music]

[1:21:01] okay uh

[1:21:05] i have an email sent to the city from bergeron

[1:21:11] saying that he wants to have a christmas tree lighting

[1:21:16] uh ceremony from the hotel on december 1st

[1:21:21] and uh alternative schedules from 5 30 to 7 30.

[1:21:26] there'll be some free hot chocolate microfighter music there's going to be a

[1:21:29] bridge in santa claus they can be the same

[1:21:34] grief walking in the introduction benediction pledge of allegiance

[1:21:39] we're going to light the tree and then

[1:21:42] and then gareth is going to let me throw up a

[1:21:46] switch and one more thing

[1:21:49] and some children are going to help so when he has asked that was a close

[1:21:56] [Music]

[1:22:08] running

[1:22:15] december 2nd we bumped it one day after some feedback from the community okay so

[1:22:19] december 2nd

[1:22:27] [Music]

[1:22:37] celebrating c grades i assume they still work

[1:22:40] so i i made a motion that you guys are good

[1:22:43] with this

[1:22:50] uh [Music]

[1:22:59] okay

[1:23:08] [Music]

[1:23:16] okay so december 2nd we're going to have tree legs ceremony i think that's neat

[1:23:21] you've done a really good job with the hotel it's nice thank you sir it really

[1:23:24] looks nice a lot of us have a lot of history there

[1:23:29] my uh my

[1:23:32] wife's great grandparents stayed there the night before parents prepared

[1:23:36] somebody that's a very special place yeah so

[1:23:41] okay emotion

[1:23:45] all right for both of those

[1:23:48] and i have a second from cindy all in favor

[1:23:52] okay i don't think i finished the administrative department head reports

[1:23:58] did anybody have any questions before i go on

[1:24:01] one

[1:24:22] yes

[1:24:27] [Music]

[1:24:34] [Music]

[1:24:46] they're going to start and they'll be spreading of course

[1:24:50] um there's some equipment out there we need

[1:24:53] to get out of that but we may have to move to the rodeo

[1:24:57] [Music]

[1:25:10] [Music]

[1:25:22] county fire department

[1:25:37] just along that line this afternoon i

[1:25:42] got a proposal from a an auction company leaves and

[1:25:48] something i didn't have a chance to look at it

[1:25:51] but they will do live auctions no charge to the city auction anything off scrap

[1:25:58] iron they'll auction off the water tower once

[1:26:02] it comes down they'll handle that for us

[1:26:05] and live auction and uh i'll give i'll pass that

[1:26:09] information along to the council as soon as i have a chance to look forward okay

[1:26:13] thank you man anyway we're going to compare that stuff

[1:26:16] somehow so just

[1:26:19] clean up

[1:26:25] [Music]

[1:26:33] and that can be costly so

[1:26:38] anything else all right i'm going to move on then

[1:26:42] public comments maybe public comments okay

[1:26:46] um any other words of discussion we'll

[1:26:49] actually take it this time first uh

[1:26:53] pastor video martinez senior celebrating his 58th anniversary

[1:26:59] at their church on sunday and uh i've been asked to uh

[1:27:04] recognize that and um i'm suggesting that

[1:27:08] i make him an honorary mayor today i'm going to take a bunch of pivotal

[1:27:13] forms but

[1:27:20] and the council is invited to be there in the church

[1:27:30] um okay so just so you guys have that on your calendar

[1:27:35] uh pastor martijs has been a wonderful part

[1:27:38] of our community

[1:27:41] first and friendliest people i ever met in this family

[1:27:45] um our water project the freshwater project

[1:27:49] uh he's working hard on specs and other things like that you've

[1:27:54] already seen the eagle water tower doing soil samples

[1:27:59] because the new watercolor is going to be bigger heavier needs more ground

[1:28:04] support so we're trying to make sure that we have the support of them we need

[1:28:07] and you're going to start seeing a lot of activity like that he has not yet

[1:28:11] done bids on things but that's coming

[1:28:14] um and uh you have the money i know um so it's just a matter of

[1:28:20] um well i mean you know really it's kind of

[1:28:25] sad before

[1:28:30] [Music]

[1:28:40] he's pressing on real fast and then i talked to mark pelletier

[1:28:46] today

[1:28:49] he's been held up because it's an epa i think it is

[1:28:54] i can't tell you what the real floodplainer's secrets is

[1:28:58] um and and john perkins is insisting that

[1:29:02] uh the new city hall is about one player we have insurance

[1:29:07] and perpetuity and flood insurance that's the same street

[1:29:11] you're on gareth by the way they're they're saying it might be what

[1:29:15] i don't i don't there is no definition of a

[1:29:18] floodplain in that area we've never seen yeah yeah i asked for a canoe for

[1:29:22] christmas so we'll be all sad [Music]

[1:29:28] so john had sent him about 10 questions and said

[1:29:33] and the floodplain issue is the biggest one

[1:29:36] so what he's probably going to do is build a city hall up

[1:29:39] a foot and then slope the sides away from it

[1:29:42] and then we'll probably have favorite blood insurance before it's all right

[1:29:46] that's going to be the answer to john has a conditional

[1:29:50] [Music]

[1:30:08] they contacted me today they have the servers for both police department and

[1:30:13] city hall however with the audit going on i told

[1:30:17] them they'd better postpone till next week for that

[1:30:22] we have talked to them zach it's their one who is working with us and

[1:30:26] uh dan and his staff are very impressive zach i'm very impressed with zach he's

[1:30:31] doing what he's telling us needs to be done so

[1:30:35] we've been very pleased with the service we're getting we're on their contract

[1:30:39] now you can call me

[1:30:42] voice over internet so i'm always celebrating

[1:30:47] we've got two different bids one from verizon and then one from cpsi

[1:30:52] ctsis on a third of the cost yes and quite a bit more capability

[1:30:59] it's actually less money per month than we're paying right now

[1:31:04] it makes sense for us

[1:31:08] so ours is currently a firm in georgia or alabama

[1:31:13] yeah so

[1:31:15] we have police have these guys but so

[1:31:19] okay anything else

[1:31:22] all right i'm sorry mayor did item 11 get addressed

[1:31:27] oh

[1:31:35] okay

[1:31:40] [Music] main street segregates llc

[1:32:04] [Music] um

[1:32:12] [Music]

[1:32:30] well actually i i don't have it memorized okay exactly well there is a

[1:32:35] 60-day period

[1:32:38] it sounds

[1:32:55] [Music]

[1:33:08] [Music]

[1:33:15] [Music]

[1:33:23] [Music]

[1:33:48] since he [Music]

[1:34:02] yeah uh but he's you know he did a list you know last week according to the

[1:34:08] process but

[1:34:17] the city council um have to approve the agreements

[1:34:20] and pass a resolution so i think that's what we

[1:34:24] need to do can we do that on this meeting on the 18th you could do that

[1:34:30] tonight [Music]

[1:35:00] [Music]

[1:35:11] so we can put it yeah we can we can put it on the 18th

[1:35:16] i'll get you copies of the agreements what she's

[1:35:19] reading from movement is on the agreement

[1:35:25] so that's part of the contract

[1:35:44] okay

[1:36:00] [Music]

[1:36:17] [Music]

[1:36:25] [Music]

[1:36:36] okay

[1:36:46] you're basically going to endorse the

[1:36:50] economic development board is a branch of government so

[1:36:55] you have to approve anything they do so she's recommending these agreements

[1:37:02] if you feel comfortable with them then you would endorse those agreements being

[1:37:06] signed once they're signed we publish a notice

[1:37:10] of the newspaper saying that these agreements have been

[1:37:14] approved by the council and they're going to wait for 60 days to

[1:37:18] see if citizens organize some protest circulate a petition that's to give them

[1:37:25] time to organize and circulate a petition

[1:37:28] to call for an election [Music]

[1:37:32] if that doesn't happen after 60 days then

[1:37:37] we go ahead with the last part of that whatever the stipulations

[1:37:48] so these minutes that i'm wanting to get i'll make those

[1:37:52] available to you these are public documents

[1:37:55] you all will get a copy of these minutes where to discuss what you said all about

[1:38:02] and the agreements themselves

[1:38:15] [Music]

[1:38:20] [Music]

[1:38:29] from the last business that was given them

[1:38:32] from hey [Music]

[1:38:35] so we kind of

[1:38:37] love it yes and that's what i told

[1:38:40] you this is my first time

[1:38:44] [Music]

[1:38:56] to go

[1:39:20] [Music]

[1:39:24] 11 18 at 6 30 is our meeting to do the

[1:39:29] blind redistricting and then we'll deal with

[1:39:32] this economic development issue

[1:39:35] and then december 13th

[1:39:38] correct

[1:39:45] [Music]

[1:39:48] these are your districts

[1:40:06] yes

[1:40:21] well in life [Music]

[1:40:40] [Music]

[1:40:45] is [Music]

[1:41:03] ethnicity population

[1:41:06] when someone examined it there moved it there

[1:41:15] maybe not imbalanced

[1:41:20] um

[1:41:43] all the way down to 180

[1:41:46] and then east of seminole there's a little bit of stuff around the

[1:41:50] edges of the symbol various precincts appreciate the ones

[1:41:56] so we've got

[1:42:07] [Music] i don't think

[1:42:28] thank you guys

Regular Session Meeting - Nov 8th, 2021

Transcript