[Music] Oh, good afternoon. I now open the regular city council meeting for Lok City Council for September 9th, 2025. The city council will now recess into executive session in accordance with Texas Government Code section 551.071 071 to consult with and seek the advice of the city's legal council. Section 551.072 to discuss the purchase exchange or value of real property. Section 551.074 to discuss personnel matters. And section 551.087 to discuss economic development matters. The city council is now recessing at 10:02 p.m. All right. The council is now reconvening in open session at 2:05 and we'll take up our ceremonial items and I call on uh the lead pastor of First Church in the Nazarene here in Lach uh Gary Young to lead us in our invocation after which our mayor pro Tim will lead us in our pledges to the United States and the Texas flags. Will you please stand as you are able? >> Yes, thank you. Please join me in prayer. Father, we thank you for this city council that is gathered. Lord Jesus, we recognize right now that you are the the Lord of Lord and the King of Kings. Father, you are above all and in all things. Lord, we place our our hope and our trust in you. We thank you, Jesus, for your salvation, for your mercy and your grace. And Father, right now in the name of Jesus, I pray a holy anointing upon upon this council. I pray for favor upon our city, Lord Jesus. We pray for blessing from heaven, Father, to fall upon this city and bless us in ways, Lord, that only you can do. Father, we pray for wisdom and revelation as Paul would pray. I pray that wisdom and revelation upon each and every one of these council members. I pray that every decision that was that would be made would bring glory and honor to the name of Jesus. Lord, I pray we would be led by you, that we would serve you and honor you in every way. Lord, I pray your blessing upon each and every council member. I recognize the responsibility that they carry in the districts and the city that they represent. And father, I pray your holy blessing and favor upon them as well. I pray you would lead this meeting. Let it let it let them father in this meeting. Let every word be express generosity and mercy and grace not just to each other but to you as well. Lord Jesus, we give you the glory and all the honor. It's in your name we pray. Amen. >> Amen. Thank you, pastor. And just a little known fact, they come and pray for us all the time. So, we appreciate it. And with that, please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Honor the Texas flag. I pledge algiance to the Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. >> All right. Now, call this meeting to order. We would take up citizen comments, but we have none. Uh, no one who signed up today for citizen comments. Uh but to remind you, everyone is welcome to make comments before the city council at any meeting uh uh regarding any uh item that's on our agenda. And you need to give us your name and address before the meeting begins in writing. Okay. Uh we'll now take up agenda item uh 4.1, which is the minutes from the August 4th, August 5th, and August 7th special city council meetings and the August 12th regular city council meeting. Is there a motion to approve item 4.1? >> Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Is there any discussion or amendments or changes to th those minutes? >> I see none. All in favor? Let me know by saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. I hear none. That motion is approved unanimously. All right. We now take up item five, which is our consent agenda. Uh and we're going to pull item 5.26 for separate consideration. And uh I will then uh therefore entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item 5.26. Is there a motion? >> Is there a second? Have a second. Uh any discussion? Any opposition to that? I see none. All in favor saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. I hear none. That motion passes unanimously. So let's take up item 5.26. I'm going to call on our police chief. I see him there at the back to give us a brief summary of uh this item because there's a couple things we want to make clear about it to our citizens. Thank you, Chief. >> Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, council. Mr. Mayor, uh the alteration of the current document is to adjust so that current permit holders are not forced on October 1st to repermit, incurring additional fees. So they won't have to uh to renew their permits until the actual renewal date for their individual permits and that's the only alteration. Are there any questions for the chief about that matter? >> Mayor Council, I would note you have that at your place and it's the very last filledin item there. >> All right. Thank you very much, Chief. Appreciate it. >> Yes, sir. Oh, I'm sorry. >> Yes, Mr. Rose. >> Uh, mayor, I move to approve item 5.26 effective for all alarm permits issued or renewed on or after October 1st, 2025. >> Thank you. Is there a second? All right, we have a motion to second. Any further discussion on that item? I see none. All in favor, let me be know by saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. I hear none. That motion passes unanimously. All right. Now, the council will take up its regular agenda. We'll begin with item 6.1, a public hearing relating to the assessment rate for the Valencia Public Improvement District. As a reminder, the purpose of this public hearing is to hear from members of the public on this matter. The council may ask questions of staff during the public hearing, but no discussion of the merits will be conducted by the council during the public hearing. The council has already received in their packet the staff report and recommendations of the advisory board for the Valencia Public Improvement District. I'll now call on our city's business development director, Miss Brianna Brown, to provide a brief summary of this uh public improvement district. Uh that is the assessment that's the subject of this public hearing. Miss Brown. >> Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, council. Um, you just finished approving all of the second reads on assessment ordinances for the remainder of the public improvement districts throughout the city. As a reminder, I had an error in our public posting for this um public hearing at our last meeting. And so that's why you are being asked to consider this one on its own today. So, my apologies about that. Um the Valencia Public Improvement District, like all of the other ones that you considered um at our last meeting, um has not requested an increase or decrease in their assessment rate. So, we are asking you to approve um the existing assessment rate for um calendar year 26. This is a map of the Valencia PID. Um in this district, we represent or we oversee the park. That's the green space in the middle. Um surrounded by 87th Street and a small section of median. um adjacent to Iola 2024 assessment rate was 18 cents per $100 valuation. We are asking for um the same 18 cents per $100 valuation in 2025. Um and with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. >> Are there any questions for Miss Brown? >> Thank you, M. Brown. All right. Is there anyone here now who wishes to speak regarding the recommended assessment rate for the Valencia Public Improvement District? I see no one coming forward. So, I'll close this public hearing at 213. So, is there a motion to approve item 6.1 as recommended? >> So, move. >> Have a motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> We have a second. Any further discussion? I see none. Uh all in favor let me know by saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. I hear none. That motion to approve uh carries unanimously. All right. We'll move on now to item 6.2 to consider an ordinance approving and adopting a budget for the fiscal year 2025 on second reading. I will now call on the city manager to give a brief summary of this item. Thank you, Mayor, City Council. Uh, first off, you have at your seats today the full copy of exhibit 3. It's three pages. I mean, sorry, exhibit G. This reflects the changes from the date that we filed the proposed budget to where we stand today. On your screen, I've extracted the majority of the first page. Um, this reflects the work that was done at your prior meeting. And then thus is the budget that's in front of you today after having passed on first read. At the top you can see the decrease in the property tax revenue, the replacement with the streets capital project fund, what had been a contingency fund, the $15,000 decrease in the city council's budget, the $23,86 decrease that came out of the traffic. And remember that was that latex printer we had asked for in the new year that didn't make it to the end of the year. So we've done that. You can see that uh there was just a very tiny amount left to balance from from reserve that has been done. The next section where it calls out revenue and rate that is the proposal for the new uh park fees plus what is coming on for the new athletic fees. Let me draw your attention to the last line of that section where it says increase transfer to parks capital project fund. That is that estimated net new revenue over those athletic fields and the estimated amount thereof. Go right down below that to parks capital project fund. Now you see the switch thus leaving the base fees where they have been and those new fees going to that capital improvement project being locked up for that use. The last section is how we come in and balance all the remainder of that out. Again, l ending with your last line, transfer to general fund 1.7 million. That goes to the second line at the top, transfer from in the amount of the 1.7 million. So, be glad to take any questions you may have. >> Are there any questions for the city manager? >> I see none. >> All right. Thank you. All right. We're going to um uh this is a record vote, but we need a motion approving the uh and adopting a budget for fiscal year 2025 to 2026. >> So move second. >> All right. And to be clear, the motion to adopt is the second reading of the budget we passed last week. So everybody who's listening is the budget we passed. All right. Now we will open this up for uh discussion. Is there any discussion? All right. I will I guess take advantage of this opportunity then. Uh like most on this council, um my priority uh when I ran and when I was elected was public safety. Um that's my highest priority and I've heard many on this council say that. I think everybody on this council has said that that is their highest priority. Um I believe this budget shows a commitment to that by what we're doing for our police officers, our fire uh and and women and our animal control uh people. But the second most important issue I ran on and was elected on was to keep taxes as low as possible. And some on this council were unopposed, so they didn't have to state a position on taxes. But I've heard many of you say that you do want to keep taxes as low as possible. Frankly, I don't believe the budget that's before us reflects a serious effort to keep taxes as low as possible. And why do I say that? I say that because after more than two and a half hours of deliberation by this council last week, the only expense that five members of this council voted to cut from a $316 million budget that the city manager presented to us was a mere $15,000, which I recommended to be cut from our city council budget. So, let me put this in perspective. Suppose a family in Lev with a household income of $64,000, which is the average household income in Lev sat around their table to discuss what they would be willing to cut from their expenses in order to make ends meet. And after two and a half hours of discussion around the table, they got up and agreed that all they could manage to do over the next year was to buy just one less half-pric drink at Sonic for the entire year. That's what we did last week. I put it another way. I say I had 20,000 pennies out here and we're trying to save something. What our vote last week amounted to was one penny out of 20,000. That's why I say I don't think it reflects a serious effort to keep taxes low on behalf of our taxpayers. And I'm thinking about the taxpayers that are struggling. I'm not thinking about myself. I'm not thinking about most of us up here. I'm thinking about taxpayers who are on limited incomes and are struggling to make ends meet. And what have we done? I don't think we've done enough. Actually, what it represents is 1/200th of 1% of a cut to that budget. Not 1%, not onetenth of a percent, 1/200th of 1% of a cut to that budget. I think we can do better for love taxpayers, many of whom are having to have serious conversations around their tables about what they're going to do without and where they're going to cut. So, I'm going to invite us again to try this exercise one more time. I'm not going to propose the same budget cuts I proposed last week. You already voted against those. Not an appetite for that. But I want us to have a discussion and make an effort at finding some other way we might be able to trim this budget uh for the sake of the taxpayers of love. I'm going to suggest that we make this effort because I believe we owe it to the taxpayers. And with that in mind, I'm going to propose a motion to amend the budget. I don't intend my budget motion to affect the salary increase we're giving to our employees at all. I'm leaving that alone. I believe they're worth it. They do a good job for us. But before I offer my amendment, I want to give anyone else here an opportunity to offer any additional cut they would be willing to accept in this budget. I will entertain that before I make my motion. Is there anyone else here who is willing to offer up any cuts to this budget? Mr. Gusheen. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh I agree with your comments and uh in particular, I think that serious effort is what's called for this year because we are close enough to balancing the budget without a tax increase that we owe it to the taxpayers to make that additional effort. And so I I um support your comments and I'm also willing to uh support the discussion of of any reduction in spending that um the council is willing to discuss. >> All right, Mr. Rose. >> Mayor, when when you say you're going to make a motion to amend, do you have specific things that you have on your mind that we're going to cut? >> I do. I was just giving anyone else an opportunity to suggest anything. >> Then I'll wait on >> All right. All right. Without any suggestion, here is what I propose to offer. I just want to let you know before I make the motion itself. Uh first of all, um there would be a revenue item increase of $300,000 from the INS budget, moving it from the INS budget uh over into the M budget. Now, that's a little bit less than half of what I proposed last week, which was $625,000. There wasn't the appetite on this council for that big of a cut. So, half of that, a little bit less than half in that would be $300,000 expense item decrease of $100,000 to market luck, which was proposed last week by Dr. Wilson, but it uh got withdrawn. But I think that's a reasonable uh additional cut in this budget. An expense item decrease of $556,000 from the non-public safety budgets, which is public safety is police, fire, animal control as I have defined it. And that's a 2% decrease in the non-personnel expenses in those budget. not touching the personnel expenses, only the non-personnel expenses in those budget, which is a little bit more than a 2/10en of a decrease in the overall budget. Again, that's half of what I proposed last week. Then an expense item decrease of $15,000 from the city council budget to eliminate the $30,000 for the Japan Ambassadors Program and to replace it with $15,000 or leaving $15,000 there for a locally operated junior leadership program similar to the Lach 101 we offer for adults here. A lot was said last week about opportunities for our young people here in Luk to learn leadership. Well, I think those opportunities can be made available for them right here in Lok to a lot of kids who can't afford to go to Japan, but they can stay here and they can learn leadership right here in Lok, Texas. So, I offered uh $15,000 cut, but to leave $15,000 in there to operate a junior leadership program here, which is very similar to a love 101, which operated on $16,000 last year and I think affected I think we had 26 people adults enrolled in that. It's a great program. So, I offer that as an alternative because I believe people on this council said they're interested in leadership, but I don't think you need to go to Japan uh to do that. And I don't think that has anything to do with what we need to be doing as a city council. Altogether, these changes amount to $971,000, which will cut the tax increase that was voted on last week by half, approximately 1/ half. So, this is my motion. I'll state it here. I move to amend the budget to move $300,000 from the INS budget to the M budget to decrease by $100,000 the money uh spent our expense item for market love to decrease by $556,000 the non-public safety budgets uh not affecting personnel in those budgets and a $15,000 decrease, additional decrease other than the $15,000 we voted for last week in the city council budget uh to replace the junior ambassador program with a locally operated leadership program for our young people. That is my motion. Can I get a second? >> Okay. Was that Mr. Harris? Okay. Okay. Have a motion and a second. and I'll open that for discussion. Now, >> Mr. Mayor, could I could I ask a clarifying question? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. On the $300,000 revenue increase from INS, that is is that shifting another portion of the tax rate or is that coming out of the INS reserve? >> That is coming out of the INS and shifting over >> coming out of the tax rate. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. All right, Mr. Rose. >> Uh Jared, can you explain to us this this INS rate, the 300,000, where that money, how we got that money? >> Uh certainly the your tax rate's two different pieces. We talk about it in total. It's two different pieces. At the moment, the interest and syncing the INS tax rate uh is the 10.75 cents. that generates an amount of money that is pledged to the debt service for your taxbacked debt. Primarily that's going to be your street bonds um as it carries forward. There's a few others in there but primarily the street bonds. You have to pay the debt and you have to maintain a reserve off of it. And so that is the source that piece of the tax levy the uses debt service and reserves against it. >> Okay. So this is it's it's tax money. >> Yes. >> Um and moving this is also legally a tax increase. Correct. >> That that is correct. It's not an extra dollar out of pocket, but it is legally a tax increase. >> Okay. So, mayor, when you say we don't have the appetite to cut on stuff, this isn't actually cutting an expense. This is just moving tax money around. Correct. >> That is correct. >> Okay. >> Everything else is an expense item, but this one is not. This is a revenue item. >> Right. So that that's a that's a revenue move. So I don't think saying that we don't have the appetite to to cut things when 300,000 is not a cut. We're just moving tax money to other places. We're just moving tax money. that um the only thing I would say to that if we didn't move that then it would increase their taxes even more what they pay. >> Sure. So you talk tax rate or you talk what people pay and so this is a way to drive down what they actually have to write that check for. >> Yes. >> So in in my opinion that that's not a that's not a cut to expenses. We we we sit up here and talk about all these these cuts that we're that you're willing to make, but that's not a that's not a cut. So then we're sitting at we're sitting at 671,000 instead of I mean in my book not 971,000 just kind of a just to clarify. >> Yes, that would be correct. Mayor ProMip. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um this is for city manager. First of all, when we talk about public safety, we know that that includes uh police, fire, animal services. Does that not include health, the health department as well? Just correct me if I'm being naive. >> The the classification includes public health. >> And yet, every time you've talked about it, mayor, you keep forgetting that public health. So, don't forget that just for the future. >> I think I've been clear about what I include in public safety. >> Well, you haven't mentioned them. >> I have mentioned them last week. Needless to say, the market luck, they're evidently working very hard for us in the community and we don't always get to see because sometimes we have sensitive items to deal with, but they're very important. Their work is important to our community. The other thing that you talked about non-personnel doing a um another cut to departments. We're these folks are doing so much work with very little. And you know, it's great when we have to do fundraising, but we shouldn't have to do fundraising for every need that exists in the community, but so many departments have had to do that. And then when you talk about um doing away with the junior ambassador program because I am so active in the community and know the programs that exist in the community and um I know that we have several different leadership programs for the youth including United Ways youth leadership program the YW.C.A's DA's youth leaders goods community youth development program the volunteer cent's youth leadership program why are we going to create something new this is an opportunity and let me remind you one more time when we talk about junior ambassadors these kids raise their own money it's not a lot of money but they pay their own way the other part is which is um 25 20 to $25,000 Not I don't know where the 43 came from last time, but these dollars help with other things that are related to the to the trip. And it's a small bag of peanuts in comparison to what we get in return. We've had a very long-standing relationship with a sister city and Mousashino City, Japan. A great opportunity for kids to build skills that go beyond the city limits. Why do we want to keep limiting kids to just what happens here? I think that's small town thinking. We need to think big for our kids and give them worldly opportunities that will benefit our city and directly in the future. So I will not support your proposal. Thank you. >> So are you saying that this is a priority for you? No, my priority is I think we did really well last time and making some cuts, but being aware of the needs of our departments, of our employees, of the wants of our young people. You can't I mean, you don't even know them. You can't come up here and start talking on their behalf when you're clueless to what even exists for young people in the community. And I don't think that's fair. And with all due respect, I think, you know, the LEC 101 is an excellent program. We only pick so many people to participate and we only get to do it one time a year, but it's a big commitment and I get it. You want to do something like that for kids. We are actually doing that through two other programs where we are allowing kids from 17 through 22 to come and do programs with our departments. And now we even have an administrative services program that we do. So we're giving the kids an opportunity to come and experience that firsthand. And they do get lessons and they do get fed and they do get a stipen and they even get a uniform. So I think we're achieving that. And why would we duplicate services? I think that's unnecessary. I say we stick to what we have and move forward. Um, I will assure you I'm not clueless as to what we do for our young people in this community. All right. Any other comments on that? Anyone else wish to offer any comments on what I've offered up as an amendment? All right. So, uh, I'm going to do this. Uh, okay. Mr. Rose, again, I'm sorry. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um, I'm I'm not willing to die on the um on the junior ambassadors program here for 15,000 or e or frankly even the market love it at 100,000. Um but when we're doing we're we're we're smoking mirrors on the 300,000 from the INS. That's that's tax money that people are going to end up paying regardless. And then um so just to let you know I'm not willing to die on a hill for for the Japan or the or the market. Love it. The 556 that's we still don't know where that money's coming from. I would like maybe some suggestions on where we're getting that from. >> All right. I'll answer your second question first and then go back to your first u issue on the 300,000. Uh, as I as stated last week, um, then the the departments that aren't police, fire, or animal control have a budget. And if you take the personnel costs and salaries and benefits out of those budgets, what is left is about $27 million. And so I'm proposing a 2% cut in that $27 million. Um, it doesn't affect salaries for the personnel. It doesn't affect the benefits. It only affects those other items that would appear in the budget for those. And I leave it to our city manager to find those because I believe he best knows where to find those. It's not uh for me or any of us up here to go and find those. We deal, I think, as Mr. Collins always says at the 30,000 foot level for the most part except for when I see something very specific in here that I don't think has a priority at all in our budget. Um so um that's where that is. If you would like to make an amendment, I would consider it as a friendly amendment to remove the 300,000 if that's what you would wish to do. Is that you want to make that as a motion? >> Dr. Wilson. >> Well, that was a lovely speech, Mayor. I appreciate your input. Um, Mr. Atkinson, $971,000 decrease in the budget. What would be the change on the average taxpayers's tax bill for Levik's part of that? Just guesstimate. I know that's a lot of math to ask real quick, but just a guesstimate. >> I don't know that I can do that one off the top of my head >> because I think the the proposed budget was an increase of >> 12 15. >> The the budget you started on today was $15.33 a year. So, we can sit up here and talk about peanuts and Cokes and cents, but another decrease in the 971 is going to reduce it a happy meal at McDonald's. That is not taxing people out of their homes. And I agree as a conservative, we want to always keep our tax rate as low as we possibly can and provide good service. And we can all sit up here and grandstand all day long about how we support police and fire, which we know we all do. We all do. But those are not the emails that I get that are complaints. I get complaints that we have potholes. I get complaints that sidewalks are buckling. I get complaints that streets are rough. And yes, we can classify those entities as public safety, but our IT department supports police, fire, and animal services. Our roads departments, our water crews out there working on fire hydrants. So yes, any type where all of those departments are integrated cuts the services and public safety that are two big entities that we all like to talk about which is police and fire provide. Most departments within the city are all integrated and work together and they will tell you that the IT budgets which were the increases that the city manager talked about all during our budget workshop. A lot of that is public safety related. All of that is new radio systems, new CAD systems, new how everything they integrate, the new computer systems that our police put in. All of the different things that they have asked for relates back to it. But yet we never say it is part of public safety, but they are. And so we start cutting these budgets, nickeling and dimeming the budgets. I don't get emails ever, very rarely ever complaining that fire is not doing their job, police is not doing their job, animal services maybe, but not usually our public safety entities. It is all the other departments and we start nickeling and dimming cutting those cutting all of their budgets even though they have presented almost all of them a flat budget where the budget that is now proposed is really just inflationary increase for them to continue to do their jobs which we know we get complaints about every day. Not that they're doing a bad job but there's just not enough of them. There's not enough money but we are trying to be responsible and so that's why I haven't proposed any increases in budgets per se. It's just to continue doing business as usual. And so that's why I cannot support I I support the premise of keeping tax taxes low for love citizens 100% but I cannot support some of the the amendment that you have brought because it's not going to it's not going to change the average taxpayers's household income where they can't afford to be there with $67 in a year not a month. $7 a year for them to still have their potholes fixed, to still have people respond when water lines break, to have it support police and fire. That is why I proposed a good compromised budget last time, and that's the budget that I think we should stick with. >> All right. So, you're not even interested in the $100,000 you offered up last week on Market Lick, right? So yes, I could take $100,000 off of Market Lick, but I think that we have to come to an agreement up here. Passing a budget takes five votes, and I don't want to sit up here and argue over $100,000 for the next five hours. I think it would be fine to take it from Market Lick. I said that last time, but I don't think we can get to five. And so I'm trying to find something that we all agree on that we can or not and even if we don't all agree, but at least that we can get past for the citizens because we owe them that. That's part of our job. And so I am trying to not be so stubborn in my ways that I can't come up with a good compromise. So yes, I suggested it. It was uh there wasn't a lot of appetite for that last time and so I backed off of that so we could come to a reasonable budget. >> Mr. Collins. Thank you, mayor. I I think it's difficult to to sit here and and allow you to categorize the rest of us in such a way that says we're not interested in what happens in in folks homes with their budgets. I I don't think that's very fair to the rest of us at all. Uh frankly, I think we all look at the things that we see in these budgets. Uh we depend upon a a very very qualified individual in Mr. Atkinson and the rest of his teams uh to put together a budget for us and and he presented that budget. I remind you that last week last week we removed $1.7 million from the budget proposed and um and we removed that from um a street maintenance contingency fund. Just this past week, we took bids on a project um on Milwaukee Avenue from Fourth Street going north to the city limits. And in a reduced scope, that project was $2.5 million over budget. Yet, we don't think we see a need to set aside money to complete that. We made a promise to the community in 2022 that we were going to do a road bond project and we were going to see to it that they were all completed. And I think this jeopardizes that. I was not in favor of the removal of the 1.7 million. I believe that we are charged to be not only responsible to the taxpayers, but responsible to the forward growth of this community and moving our city forward in a good way for all of those taxpayers. We sit and talk about we talked about impact fees a month ago and that that was critical to remove those fees, though I lost in that vote as well, but it was critical to remove those fees for growth. Yet we're jeopardizing our roadway projects that we've already determined were critical for growth. And so I I just feel like that we need to make sure that as we talk about tax rates that we are talking about this in the big picture of responsible budgeting. And I understand and and truly I do understand that there are folks who have a hard time on a daily basis. and and as you've mentioned, it might not be one of us uh who who live in that space, but we recognize that we're constantly aware of that, but we have a responsibility to provide them with good service and the growth pattern that we see in front of us. And so as we as we talk about these additional cuts, let's remember we took $1.7 million out of the budget last week, not 15,000 1.7015. Those dollars went away and and we 5 to2 agreed with that and so those dollars are gone. But let's make sure that we include that number in in what you're saying and let's make sure that we're thinking about the long term. I understand the promises made and and you made mention um of some of us who ran unopposed. We didn't have to make a promise. We didn't have to make speeches that said we would do this or do that. But my promise when I stood up, whether I knew I was going to be opposed or not, was that I would look out for the future of this community, my children and grandchildren. And I think as we continue to press down on this budget, we are jeopardizing that future. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Collins. Uh just a reminder, the 1.7 million was not an expense reduction. It was a revenue move. So, >> if I may. >> Sure. >> It was a revenue move. It was It is a The result It resulted in a lower tax rate. Yes, it was an expense reduction, but it resulted in a lower tax rate. That's how we got a lower tax rate was that removal of 1.7 million. >> But it was not an expense reduction, Mr. Collins. The only expense reduction we made last week was $15,000 out of a $316 million budget. That's the only expense reduction we made. Well, it it's a budget decrease that resulted in a lower tax rate and expenses not that that we didn't spend we're not spending $1.7 million on a road project that may need it for completion. So, I would say that it might not be an expense reduction today, but you better find it somewhere in the future because I'm afraid you're going to need it. >> All right. Any other comments? All right. I'm going to remove from my uh based on Mr. Rose's comments, I want to remove from uh my motion the $300,000 move from the INS budget. So, my motion now will be the $100,000 decrease to Market Loc, $15,000 decrease to the city council budget, and $556,000 from non-public safety budgets, non-personnel expenses in those budgets. Altogether, that would be a $671,000 uh decrease in expenses um uh in the budget. So, that is my motion. Is there a second? >> Yes. If if that you're amending your own. >> Yes. >> So the person who seconded originally with your own needs to consent to that as well. That' be Mr. Harris. >> Mr. Harris to his motion. >> You you seconded the mayor's original. >> You agreed to my change to my motion. >> You're going to back off on it. Okay. >> Okay. So then then you'll just need a new second. >> I need a new second then. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Okay, Mr. Rose is a second. All right. Any further discussion? All right. This is going to be a recorded vote and I'm going to ask uh each council person to vote. We're not going to do this with the machine. I'm going to call on each council person to vote. I will vote yes. And I'm going to call on you by order of council districts. District one. >> Clarify. This is on your motion. >> Yes. On my motion. >> No. >> That's a no. District council two. Mr. Harris. >> No. >> District council three. Mr. Glashine. >> Hi. >> District council four. Mr. Rose. >> Hi. >> District council five. Dr. Wilson. >> No. District Council 6, Mr. Collins. >> No. >> So that motion fails four to three. Is that right? Is that right? All right. So now we go back to the original motion, right? And we already have the first. Do we have to go back and have another? >> No, no, no. You already have a first and second on that motion. >> We already have a first and second on that one. All right. So any further discussion on that motion? I see none. Um, all in favor, let it be known. Let's we we'll go through this again. So, all on the original motion, I will vote nay on that. Uh, district council one, Mr. Harris, >> no, >> excuse me, Mayor Pro Tim, I'm sorry. >> Just do >> I'll do it the way I want to. Dr. Wilson, please. Will you restate the motion? >> The motion is the original budget now. The budget that you that we passed last week. >> Nay. And I say yay. >> Okay. Mr. Harris. >> Yay. >> Mr. Goshin. >> Mr. Rose. >> Hi. >> Dr. Wilson. >> I >> Mr. Collins. >> Yes. >> Okay. That passes 5 to two. All right. All right. Now, we have to take up 6.3, which is consider a resolution ratifying the adoption of fiscal year 202526 budget that will require raising more revenue from property taxes than in the previous year. I will call on the city manager now to give a brief summary of this item. Is there a brief summary? >> We can be very brief, mayor. >> Item 63 is a state law requirement. This is not a local requirement. It is a state law requirement for you to ratify the vote that you just took. So the vote that just passed 5 to2, which was the budget that was established a week ago, you're now being asked to ratify your vote on that budget. >> Are there any questions? >> You're doing the same thing all over again. >> Yes. This is to fulfill our statutory requirements, right? Okay. So, is there a motion to approve item 6.3? >> So, move. >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor, let it be known. Well, this has to be a recorded vote. Does not have to be a recorded vote. All in favor, let it be known by saying I. >> I. >> Any oppose? Say nay. Nay. I think that passes 522. Is that right? All right. And I'll take up item 6.4 4 to consider an ordinance on second reading second set setting the tax rate and levying a tax upon all property subject to taxation with the city of love for 2025. I will call on the city manager again to give a staff briefing on this item. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I believe each of you have at your place a copy of the tax rate motion. This is the motion that was ultimately approved last week. This is the motion that supports the budget. you've now just voted upon in 6.2 and 6.3. That being the case, the interest and syncing fund tax rate would be 0.107586 and your interest and syncing I I'm sorry, your maintenance and operations 0.364 605. Collectively, you add the two together. Collectively, that's a 2.22% increase in your tax rate. It is a total tax rate of 47.2191. And the increase to the average single family residential home would be $15.33 per year. All right. Uh, as a reminder, a motion setting a tax rate that exceeds a no new revenue tax rate must be a record vote and at least 60% of the council, which is five votes on this council, must vote in favor of the motion. So, is there a motion setting the tax rate and leving a tax upon all property subject to taxation with the city of Leach for 2025? Dr. Wilson, you have the language. >> Yeah. Okay. >> I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.107586 for the city's interest and syncing fund and 0.364605 for the city's general fund for maintenance and operations, which is effectively a 2.2% tax increase in the tax rate. Second. >> Do we have a motion and a second? Any further discussion? I see none. Since this has to be a recorded vote, would you put that up for us, Miss B? Okay. And that motion passes 5 to two. All right. We will now take up agenda item 6.5 to consider a resolution amending the allocation of the hotel occupancy tax revenues for fiscal year 2025 and 26. And I'll call again on the city manager to bank a brief summary of this item. >> Thank you, mayor. If you don't mind, we'll switch uh presentation inputs. So, mayor and council, you are required to have a separate vote that dictates the allocation of your hotel occupancy tax receipts. You see that on the screen. These are all also within the budget. That's now the adopted budget. There's not been a change related to your hot tax. So, you have a total revenue going out of 10.081 million. That is approximately $381,880 more than the prior year. And there was $25,000 worth of interest credited to that that you can put out. You take the ones on the right and run that down the screen. Again, these are the allocations reviewed during your budget workshops and it totals back to the 10.081 million. >> All right. Any questions for Mr. uh Atinson about the hotel occupancy tax allocation. I see none. So is there a motion to approve item 6.5? So move >> second. >> Have a motion and a second. Any discussion? >> I see none. All in favor let be know by saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. >> That motion passes 6 to one. All right. We'll take up item 6.6 six to consider a resolution adopting a delivery system electric rate tariff schedule for the lick public le power and light and city of Leach municipally owned electric utility available to all rate classes effective November 1st 2025 thank you >> and okay well I'd have down here Joel Ivy but you're not Joe Ivy so Harvey just uh go right ahead and uh give a brief summary of this item >> I'm just not as good-looking as he is so I'll just he's put me up here so um >> you drove the short straw is that Right. So, I got the honor and the privilege of being able to present to you our delivery rates. Um, part of our one of our strategic pieces of our strategic financial plan and an important part of that is to manage our delivery rates. We had made a commitment that over a three to five year period after entering into retail market competition we would gradually move and work to get our deliver system delivery rates to about the midpoint of other transmission distribution utilities. So before you up on the screen right now are our rate comparisons uh for residential, small commercial, large commercial and primary customers. And what's reflected there is the rate at a at an at an average monthly bill. So you have apples to apples comparison when you see these bills. And when we look at our residential, we are we are not quite in the middle, but we're off we're fairly close to the middle. Um when it comes to our secondary or what I would call small commercial businesses, we're also very close to being near the middle. our large commercial customers, what we would call secondary, greater than 10,000 kilowatt hours in any given month. We actually are slightly below the middle of middle of the pack. So doing fairly well there. Our primary is where our primary customers and we have 11 customers that are in the primary and that means they're over a million kilowatt hours. Fairly large customers. We have an opportunity there to decrease their rate. Um, so they are we have a little more room to try to catch up with there. We had a little bit of space within our budget to be able to allocate funds to reduce that or reduce our reduce our revenue in that area. So we are proposing a 2% rate decrease for our primary customers. Um, we would not change the residential, the small commercial and the large commercial at this time. Um, let me look to So, that just shows you the rate comparison where we're at with it compared to our other customers. This shows you what our current rates are and comparing that to what our perspective or rate change would be. So, obviously for residential, we would not change that. For secondary, what I call small commercial, we would not change that. For secondary, greater than 10K, we would not change that. Primary, we would reduce by 2%. for primary substation and transmission rates. We currently do not have any customers in those rates and we're not proposing any change to those rates. For street lights, uh what we are doing is uh the rate actually goes up but the load goes down. So there's two components to the impact and this has to do with the city. So the city the city had a budget last year of 1.3 million. uh we're proposing that bu cost effectiveness to be flat for this year. So by we have actually decreased our load by 16%. Last year in this current year we'd forecasted our load somewhere around 43 hour 4,300 hours that you would actually have your street lights street lights on. Um that really probably should be around 4,100 hours. Um so we are going to reduce so the load on it. So there's two functions that come to the cost of the 1.3 million. You got your load, the kilowatt hours, and the rate. So we're going to reduce the load to down to an area where we think it's more applicable and move the rate to where we think would offset that. The intended cost recovery from the from the city would remain at 1.3 million and unchanged from the current year. So that would be the proposed change. And then this would reflect if adopted by the city council, this would reflect our new rate schedule. So I'll stop there and I will open it up for questions to the to the city council. >> That is also very complicated, but Mr. Harris. >> Yes, Mayor. Um, question. Why is there a decrease in the primary and there is no decrease in the residential? because at this point our residential currently in our cost of service they are adequately priced so we've got adequate cost recovery for it and if I would go back to our comparison to other utilities it's also fairly close to being close to the average so it would be close to the same that they would pay for any other utility >> so is that where y'all keep it at on the average you don't look forward to bringing it lower >> when we have an opportunity to do so one one thing I'll point out that 80% of the revenue that we pull in is coming from residential and secondary greater than 10k. So we only have so much money we can give up without actually drawing deeper into our reserves. So by doing residential we would have a substantial we if we did give a decrease one it would take us below our cost recovery and then also it would take us we would be able to move towards the average but it would cost us significant money to do that. So that's pro that's why we're going to focus on primary at this time. And that doesn't mean we're not going to focus on residential. Last year we gave residential a 2% rate decrease. >> Okay. >> So our our intention isn't just to be at the average. So we we will continue to work on it. But for this cut this that's what we're going to propose. >> Thank you. >> Could you go back to your former or your uh Yes. Believe that's the one I wanted. Um, now go back to the one that showed the chart, the bar chart. >> Okay. >> Okay. So, so it looks like though the way you get to the average on the residential is because TNMP is kind of an outlier there. >> That is correct. We're not and and we're not quite we're not quite average. We're actually just slightly above. >> Okay. So, I can't see any space there between the red bar and the yellow. >> Sorry. I'm sorry. That's >> there's a small little space before between that. Okay. >> That's correct. Correct. >> All right. But I mean that just seems to that that red bar skews a lot of stuff when you start talking averages. Um we're above Encore and A and Centerpoint though quite a bit. So I think that kind of goes a little bit to Mr. Harris's question there. But from what I hear you saying is because that's 80% of our >> it is any any small change has multiplier effect. >> That's correct. >> In it very greatly. >> That's correct. But you'll continue to look for any way that we can move that down. >> We continue to. Yes. >> All right. Any other questions? >> I see none. Okay. Thank you very Mr. Rose. >> I had a question on the the street lights. So if we're moving the load down, you're moving the rate up for the for the street lights. Can you explain that some more? >> So moving our load down is because everything is predicated on a load forecast. So you start with a revenue requirement. In other words, what does it cost to provide energy? What does it cost to serve these customers on a delivery basis? You have a cost you got to recover. Just like for your cars, you got a manufacturing pro. You got a cost you have to recover. >> We start with that >> and then we look at it to recover that we have to look at two things. One is going to be what is our estimated load or energy that's going to come across for that particular customer class. So, and we're going to multiply that times what our current rate is and then look at saying look at the revenue off of our current rates. Is that sufficient for cost recovery for for our revenue requirement? If it is less than that, if our revenue is not require not not sufficient, we may look to increase rates. It's not a guarantee that we will, but it's it's something we will look at just as if we have over recovery, we may look at a decrease. So we'll look at each and every one of those. We do have it's fairly close for all of them. Our budget's fairly close. Actually, our total revenue requirement for last year and this year will remain at $142,751 751,000. So that really hasn't changed. What is changing is just refining what we've got for our load forecast. So what we found was for our street lights, you're you're doing an estimate based on daylight hours. daylight hours. I come from a dark region up in the Northwest. It's 40 4,300 hours and it's like here you get light light a little bit more and so it's about 4,100 hours. That changes the load load factor that you would look at applying that rate to. We found it insufficient for this year. So we did under recover just a little over $100,000. That's something that that's something that we don't we we can we can work with especially when you're talking about the context of 142 million. Um not that we don't care about that. We do we just simply try to manage it appropriately and and so in this case we want to reset the load to an area that we think is more much more applicable adjust the rate so that at the end of the day the cost to the city remains at the fixed 1.3 million remains unchanged. So there's no change to what we would recover from the city for certain. >> So you get your cost recovery and then we're just really just doing real moving the hours where they're actually going to land. You're just simply just keeping >> even. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. >> All right. Any other questions for RV? >> All right. Thank you very much. >> All right. Is there a motion to approve item 6.6? >> So move. >> Second. >> Have a motion and a second. Any discussion? >> All in favor letting me know by saying I. >> I. >> All right. Let me say something in conclusion here. Uh, and this goes back to something Mr. Collins said. Uh, I tried to characterize my feelings about this, not not yours. Each one of us up here, I think, takes their job very seriously. And I respect everybody up here. Uh, we all have our own uh way that we look at things and how we have to evaluate things, what our commitments are. Um, so I tried to say this is what I did not consider a serious effort, but I I understand you you spoke well about what you considered your serious concern. So, I take that at uh face value that all of you are honest here about what you're trying to do with this budget. Um, we have a pretty good relationship here. It's sometimes strained a little bit, but uh I think the public needs to know that all of us up here are trying to work together uh for the benefit of our city. So, uh with that uh we are finished with everything on our agenda today. We're adjourned. [Music]