[Applause] [Music] Are you All right. I now will open the regular city council meeting of love city council for July 8th, 2025. The city council will now recess into executive session in accordance with the Texas government codes. Number 551.071 to consult with and seek the advice of our city attorney and 551.074 to discuss personnel matters and 551.087 to discuss economic development matters. The city council now is recessing at 10:04 p.m. All right, it's 1:49 and we're uh reconvening in open session and we're going to take up a work session now for the 2020 25 legislative update and I will call on the city manager to lead discussion of the results of the 89th Texas legislative session. Thank you, mayor, city council. um going to go over certainly not an exhaustive list today and of course we'll end with the Everfund special session that appears to be starting up. So to kind of kick it off, this was an extremely busy legislative session. A little over 8,700 bills were filed. You may have seen a number as big as 11,000. That number is also correct, but those are more of your ceremonial resolutions and items like that. Uh, so there were 8,719 actionable bills and joint resolutions. Just under 2,200 of those were municipal or local government related bills. So there was a lot going on just on our doorstep. All in 1,231 of those items passed to 1,231 of the 8700. So brings out an interesting statistic. About 13.9% of the bills passed this time. Even though this was the biggest filing since 1991, it equaled the lowest pass rate since 1991. I kind of stopped there before we keep going. Uh I do want to show some appreciation, offer some thanks. Um, as we continue through this, you're going to see just how busy even at Love's doorstep we were to go through this. Our local delegation, Senator Perry, Speaker Burroughs, Representative Ter, just tremendous, tremendous work um on our behalf and certainly on the state's behalf and sure want them to know how much we appreciate that. Equally as hardworking, we had our legislative committee consisting of the mayor, the mayor pro Tim and council member Dr. Wilson, and they will likely testify that I kind of wore them out, especially as we got towards the end and things were literally running 20 hours a day, seven days a week. So, to my committee, thank you to our local delegation. Um, very, very much appreciated. You you did well by love and by the state. Speaking of the state, here's some just general interest deals. Of course, these are the items that early on kind of take a lot of the air out of the room. Some of them get voted on, they're done, and you move on. A few of them continued until we got to the end of the 140 days. School property tax reform. This is a followup to what the legislature did two sessions ago where they're basically increasing the exemption. And those lost dollars then from those local school districts are made up by state general revenue. So you hear that it's property tax reform. That is 100% true. It is unique to independent school districts. Period. Water huge wins. And in fact we had a celebratory signing of Senate Bill 7 just here in Lok. So, there is a constitutional amendment that will be on everybody's ballot the first Tuesday in November to create $1 billion net new dollars per year for a period of 20 years that would be used 50% to help work on and fund improvements to existing infrastructure. So, your pumps, your pipes, your tanks, your towers, those kinds of things. And then 50% of those dollars, the other half would be for new supply. And I think in Love's case, um, and again, thank you to Senator Perry, he authored Senate Bill 7, reservoirs are an eligible use for new supply dollars from the state of Texas. Didn't start that way, but the senator led an effort to get those included. They're certainly qualifiers, which we totally agree with, but that's all good. Related to that, it's outside of Senate Bill 7, but related to that, there's an additional one-time two and a half billion dollars, and this is current money. It's not subject to the amendment, current money that's going in to the Texas Water Development Board again to keep working on the water needs of the state. So, to Senator Perry, thanks for leading that. Um, and I think you'll see Lev here in a few years under the reservoirs are eligible category. School funding, school choice. um kind of a lastm minute flurry of activity on the total THC ban which ultimately was vetoed by the governor um at the 11th hour on that and then picked up and put on the special session call and we'll do those here in a moment. I'm going to talk a few moments about just some city related bills that did pass. Only a couple um that I'll talk about in particular detail, but uh please stop at any point, stop me if you've got any particular questions. House Bill 24, this revised some of the procedures for very specific zone changes. And what you'll hear commonly talked about is it increased the protest threshold while it lowered the approval threshold. That's partly correct. So just for a moment today, we know that if at least the 20% of the owners of the land, not necessarily the lots, file a protest to his own jone change, it puts the council in a position of a supermajority vote. That didn't really change. That part is still there. There's a new clause now that says if 60% of the area, so going by land mass, if 60% protest a zone change that is 200 ft with within a boundary of 200 feet, excuse me. We'll back up. Try that again. It's getting you all choked up, isn't it? All this is so emotional. Y'all have no idea how hard it is. Okay. If at least 60% of the area, so the land mass extending 200 f feet from the area of the proposed zone change has the effect of allowing more residential development unique to residential development than the current zoning regulation. And so new residential and it does not allow additional commercial or industrial use unless that additional use is limited to the first floor only of a residential development and is not greater than 35%. So what does that sound like? High density residential or mixeduse residential. So 60% within 200 feet. It's got to be residential and it cannot increase commercial or industrial unless it's collared only to the first floor of such facility. Now, this doesn't make the most sense, but if you trigger that 60% residential, it's not commercial or industrial unless it's limited to the first floor, then the council passes with a 60% threshold. So you still have a kind of a plus one in there, but it's not the three quarters from the 20%. So this one really sliced and diced. There's a lot going on out there. There's a lot of commentary. Different people are looking at it, but that is the words literally that come out of the enrolled summary for that one. So that's House Bill 24. House Bill 30. um wasn't going to put this on there because it's usually not something that is going to come up, but the horrific events of late last week. House Bill 30 amends some of your tax rate formulas if you are in a declared disaster area. So, what it does is it lifts some of the three and a half% thresholds off of an entity if they're in a declared disaster area. I have no idea what will happen with tax rates down in the Hill Country, but you've absolutely got areas that have been affected by disaster. House Bill 33, um, called the Yuvaldi Strong Act. This actually hits multiple pieces of the state codes. It is unique to school security, to law enforcement training, mental health resources for first responders. It also includes very specific public information officer training related to of course first preventing any such future occurrences but in the horrible condition that it might how you handle it after the fact. This bill's been a while coming um but it was a very well-ritten bill. Um we're on top of what it'll need to do for us. um think it would be relevant to note we're probably over 3/4% compliant even before this one had been written. House Bill 198. This is related to doing recurring uh cancer screenings for firefighters. This goes back to presumptive illnesses. Um key thing on there has the life scan program that we offer to 100% of our fire department every year. We're actually already doing more than that law will require. 223. This establishes that if a municipality is to hire lobbying, government relations, or anything similar, that now has to be done by a competitive bid where prior to this bill, you could not do this by competitive bidding. So, if you recall last fall when we selected our consultant, that was a request for proposals and the driving factors behind an RFP are not price. This turns that around. We do not use the RFP. You say, "This is what I want. What will you charge me?" That's the end of that particular selection process. So, this one reversed. Um, House Bill 331. This is again to help protect our first responders. Um, also related to the presumptive illnesses bill, this adds a heart attack or a stroke if the event occurs within eight hours after a duty shift. Key, especially for our responders, this is going to increase their workers compensation eligibility if something like this were to occur. House Bill 554, we now have another week for fireworks sales. So June 14th to June 19th next year there will be legal firework sales. That's in addition to New Year's and Fourth of July sales. Moving sorry moving right along. 1522 is a change to how we post open meetings. The meeting we sit in today simple version today any posted meeting of a deliberative body is done seven minimum of 72 hours in advance. The new bill is three business days in advance. So, as we head towards September the 1st, you all are going to start seeing and we'll we'll send out memos. You're going to see a lot of changes in how things come out for us. So, in effect, we're going to have to post late on Wednesday for y'all to have a Tuesday city council meeting. So, just know that that's coming. 2513. Um, this is an overdue item. I'm really glad the legislature picked it up. It's related to military leave for fire departments. The statute has never properly accounted for the traditional 24 or 48 hour shifts for the firefighters to do military leave. It does now. 2844. You will see and hear a lot about this one. This bill actually has multiple sections that are effective at different periods of time. mobile food vendors. In short, this will now say a licensed mobile food vendor from any one jurisdiction is licensed in all jurisdictions. So, a mobile food vendor licensed in Lev would be licensed were they to drive to Abalene or to Austin and vice versa on that. There's also some changes to inspections and so forth. That actually puts a bigger burden back on the state. They have not written their rules. So, they have the law. Now, they have to write the rules. And as we see those come out, we'll be able to tell y'all what that might do to us. House Bill 4219. This really is just a clarification of the existing 10 business day response. Don't think it changes anything with how we handle public information act requests, but it is a new law. 456 would allow us to send zoning related notices electronically if a recipient opts in to doing that. So this is in the direct mail portion of where we do a notification. Senate Bill 15, this one uh a whole lot of time, a whole lot of back and forth that went back on this one. This was called the tiny lot bill. When Senate Bill 15 was filed, it would have said that you would have to allow as a zoning district on an unplatted piece of property residential lots that were not larger than 1,400 ft, 1,400 square feet for the whole lot. And then it had two additional qualifiers. One was width, one was depth. And the width of the lot was you couldn't require more than 20 or longer than 60 deeper. So this one continued all the way through literally was passed out on the last weekend. The final version says the minimum lot size for these to for these deals, five acres unplatted, set up to do this, is now 3,000 square foot and the minimum width is 30 square foot. So, one of the key tactics we used in trying to educate and work on this one was that 20 foot watt lip 20 foot lot width. A half ton four-wheel drive shortbox pickup that is all over this city is 21 and a half ft long. So, one vehicle parked in front of the house was wider than the whole lot was. There was also originally a density standard in here. And as such, our ability to be able not just for folks to have a good, enjoyable neighborhood, but to provide fire, police, EMS, really to get utility trucks in and out to work on those neighborhoods would have been very, very difficult. At 3,000 square feet, that's only 500 square feet smaller than what we currently allow you a development to get down to. So, it's going to be an impact. It is not near the burden that I think it was going to be. So, a lot of help on that one and I think we ended up about as good as we were going to get. Senate Bill 305. This is part of the move over slow down law. Um, and this is largely related to the tragedy in Levland a couple of years ago when the animal control officers were killed on the side of the highway. those vehicles plus now parking enforcement vehicles are included in the move over slowdown law. Senate bill 506 um just again redefining an existing piece of statute when we put a ballot proposition question out a street bond has to be definite it has to be certain and it has to be neutral. Senate bill 541 cottage food production operations. This has been a longunning activity at the legislature going back about four sessions. This one would allow your cottage food producers to sell products to vendors at wholesale with limited exceptions. So think things maybe like raw milk. It also raises the monetary threshold that such a business can hit before they go into the regulated category. and it expanded the types of food that they can produce and sell. These are largely going to be unlicensed, unpermitted. That in no way means it's bad or unsafe food. I want to be clear on that, but it just puts a larger part of that industry below the lensure or the permitting threshold. 617. This is going to be an interesting one. If there is a proposed project that would convert an existing property to be a homeless shelter, so an on-site shelter, a zoning hearing on that would have to be conducted where that is going on. Has to be done within one mile of the location and it has to be done 90 days beforehand. still going to go through planning and zoning, still going to go through city council, but you're going to have that one hearing that is on site or as close as you can get to on-site. 785 HUD code manufactured housing, what used to be called mobile homes. Under this new law, all municipalities will have to allow HUD code manufactured housing in at least one residential zoning district. And if you don't otherwise require a specific use permit for a home in that district, you will not require a specific use permit in this district. Now, the exceptions to this all default back to deed restrictions. In fact, there were numerous housing related bills this session that pulled the pulled the authorities away from a a locally elected city council, but left them inside of the deed restriction deal. That that's that's fine, but just know that as a city, we have no role in enforcing deed restrictions. That is entirely private party to private party. No, no part of that comes back to you. So, this is one that we will be analyzing and making preparations. Ultimately, it'll come back to the council because you're going to have to modify at least one residential zoning district. Um, Senate Bill 840. This is kind of is again affordable housing or the housing affordability crisis was a big topic at the legislature. There were a lot of bills this session related to that. This is one of them. This would allow either a mixeduse or a multifamily project to be built by right, meaning it does not need a zone change in any area that's currently commercial, office, retail, or mixed use. So, this is potentially taking maybe an old office building that's not being used today or not being full. They could convert that either to mixed use or to multif family within that zoning district and it doesn't need to go back to planning and zoning or back to the city council. Senate Bill 1173. Another chance to call out Senator Perry. Um this has finally raised our competitive procurement limit from 50,000 to 100,000. It's been $50,000 since the 1980s. This raises it to a hundred. the example I used when I was asked questions about of it. You know, in the 90s, I could buy a pickup truck or a police car if I had to have one, not having to go through competitive procurement, not having to wait to bring it to a city council. Today, I couldn't do that with $50,000 limits. So, this is now $100,000 on that. So, this one will be helpful and kind of speed the function of government in certain cases. All right. Senate Bill 1567. Um, there were lots of names assigned to this. Um, my favorite one was frat houses for all. Got used quite a bit during the session. The original version of this bill said a home rule municipality with a university campus could not regulate single family residential occupancy in any fashion. Yes, there was a mathematical formula in there, but for those of you that have been to my office, my office would have allowed either 10 or 11 people to live in it. So, pretty tough way it was done. A lot of hard work. Um, a lot of people working late uh late in the session on this. We are not included. I I want to be clear. Love is not included in this bill. And in fact, there's now only two cities in Texas that fall into the bracket for this bill. on one of them is College Station, the other one is not Love. Okay. Uh 1833. Um if you use social media to assist in the delivery of a controlled substance, the penalty for that offense is increased. That is a common problem both in Lok and many cities throughout Texas. um 1883. This actually in the future will apply to what y'all are going to do later today. So, land use assumptions, capital improvement plans, and impact fees. These would all have to be made publicly available at least 60 days before notice of a public hearing before in and it changes the approval threshold to adopt impact fees. statutoily changes the members of what we call here the capital improvement advisory committee and it also requires third-party audit every time you come back to work on impact fees. So this one was a big target bill. 1844 disanexation of certain areas for failure to provide services. In the past disanexation really struggling today. In the in the past disanexation was pretty limited and it required the person petitioning to be a registered voter. That has been changed to clarify that it's property owner. You're the owner of the property. Property was at one time annexed and the municipality did not follow through with their original annexation agreement. You can petition to be removed. Also, this one drills down to where a single lot. So, it's not an area that was annexed. You might have annexed what was the equivalent of five square blocks. A single lot by the property owner, if we've not met the agreement, can petition for disanexation. I don't think this is going to have much effect other than a couple of very targeted locations in the state of Texas. Um, certainly not in love. Um, and remember that in the case of Labok, the provision of utilities is contingent upon being in the city limits. So that that will still hold. Senate Bill 1948 prohibits the installation actually the requirement to install fire sprinklers in certain agriculture facilities. Some of those pretty seem to be logical and make sense. Open pole barns, things like that. Basically non-residential. Certain kinds of agricultural storage facilities though are also now included in this and you know we've had some experience where some of those have gone wrong on us in the past. So, doesn't affect existing, it affects future. But that one was one that came up that was a surprise. Not limited on or not listed on here. There was a related bill that says we cannot require the adjacent rightaway to an agricultural property to be mowed for weeds or tall grass. So, that will generate some interesting discussions in the future. Um 2351 is concrete batch plants and this has also been a bit of a running gun battle at the legislature for a long period of time. Batch plants are necessary. You cannot keep a city functioning without having good good concrete. What this one does though, anytime the standard permits for a batch plan are renewed or updated, they will have to update their air emissions controls to meet whatever the current standard is. So I think this one they struck a pretty good balance on. Um and these are issues that have arisen in love. We've worked on those almost to the end of this section. Um Senate Bill 2040 2477 actually kind of goes back and matches the prior one with the commercial office zoning. This says that u if buildings are going to be converted from office to residential, they can do that. And then there are certain building codes that will not apply as they do that. 2786. Um this is for first responders and it exempts such from taking the Texas Success Initiative test as a condition of college entrance. So as all groups continue to work on furthering education and knowledge and improvement, this will make it easier for all of our responders to be able to do that. Those are our past bills. I will stop. There's no questions. I'll go straight into what didn't pass. Any questions? Are there any questions? Let me let me ask you one. Uh Mr. Aerson, what is the procedure for uh if someone petitions for a disanexation from the city? What's the process on that? Um I would have to go pull the specifics, mayor, but if I remember it was very simple. Matt, do you recall? I think they just asked. I guess my my question is yes. I know they just they ask do we have to take a vote to approve it? Is it automatic if they ask? It's like the ETJ bill in that respect. You have a period of time in which to act. I believe it's 60 days. And if you do not, then it automatically happens. Okay. Yeah. It it'll it'll all go back for disanexation. All go back to um whatever your municipal services agreement was and what you agreed as far as to providing if they're going to be disanexing for not not providing any of the services that were in there. So that and that was some previous legislation along with this one will mean that we'll need to for requests for annexation look closely at our municipal services agreements um to make sure that there are things that we can actually fulfill that we actually can fulfill within the time frame. But yeah and it's a they have it has to have been over a period of time. It's not immediate and you can put in your municipal services agreement that period of time um up to a certain date in order to provide the whatever services there are. Okay. I just don't want a patchwork of disanex lots here and there, you know, right? Yeah. Understood. And that that creates so many logistical challenges if that were to happen. I I think the chances are of you having an individual lot in an area that's not having services, but there are other lots all around it. I mean, that do have services that do have services that So, I would think that would be probably not not um happen. All right. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Proceed. Okay. jump into uh what either did not pass or won't apply to to Lok tremendous number of bills related to city finances and to city taxation adalorum taxation simple version they pretty much all died as we went through I do think they'll be back but they pretty much all did die there was a bill called Senate Bill 673 that by right would have allowed an accessory dwelling unit, what used to be called like a mother-in-law's quarters or something to that effect on any residentially zoned property. And it really didn't respect setbacks or anything else. That one did not pass. Senate Bill 1567, uh, I've already talked about it. It's back on here. The floor amendment that changed those population brackets around was done by Representative Ter. So, great great work there. Preeemption. Um, lot of bills were filed on preeemption. The biggest one, the one that went the farthest was Senate Bill 2858. It does build on top of a bill passed in 2023. I would note the preeemption statutes that were within it really were probably not the issue to us. Um, we've not found concerns over the 2023 preeemption bill. Um, didn't really see them in this one. It's that second point that ended up being our issue. Says it reversed the burden of truth. What it did was declared you guilty until proven innocent. So if there was a complaint that a municipality had violated one of the preeemption statutes, as soon as the attorney general's office opened an investigation, all of your sales tax was frozen and kept. any state grants that you may participate in. For us, those are mainly public safety, mainly police, all of that stops. If ultimately you end up being able to prove, and again, the burden is reversed. We have to prove we didn't rather than they have to prove that you did. If after some period of time you get adjudicated by a court and they say you're city, you did it right, those funds will get released. If not, the state got to keep most of them and they came in and changed all of your tax rate calculations for a period of time going forward. So, what the state is saying they have supremacy over as far as, you know, regulation didn't see that as the issue. It's the reversing everything for what happens if somebody were to challenge you on that. Um, that one did die. Um the uh anti- lobbying bill, what's commonly called the taxpayer funded lobbying bill, that one also died. It actually died in a House committee as we got toward the end on there. That though goes right into those failed topics and you can see the list there that we expect to return. Um go down four bullet points on there. Residential use on religious owned land. That was a really unique bill that came out. um basically would have taken if the property was owned by a qualified religious institution, you don't really have zoning on that anymore if they want to convert it to residential use. So, it was treating certain property much different than it would treat any other property. There were quite a few bills and they showed up in the financing, they showed up in the elections, they showed up several different places to in effect eliminate the May uniform election date. So, it was not that long ago that cities, school districts, counties, you had four uniform election days spread evenly throughout the year. We have two now, May and November. and numerous bills would have basically said, "No, we're going to do it all in November." So, those have showed up with more and more frequency the last three sessions. So, I think they're going to continue that push. Probably won't be all at once, but it will. They did, the legislature did extend the ability for cities that have May to move everything to November at the council's choice and to do that without having to go change your charter such, but those are out there. They're coming back. Private utility relocation at city cost. This was a pretty innocuous looking bill when it started, but the way this one would have worked and it did die. Take one of your road bond projects and we're going to expand. We're going to widen. We're going to pave a road that didn't was dirt before. In all of your franchise agreements, which is how a private entity leases public property for private purposes. So, think of all your underground utilities. All those franchise agreements say, "Okay, you have the right to be there. This is the fee that you pay. All is good. But in those situations to where us as the property owner needs to do something different, you will move your utilities to accommodate that. Still get to stay in the rightway. Don't have to go find another easement, but you, the individual utility owner, at your expense, will move that to accommodate our new road. This bill would have gone the other direction. If we went to take a two or threelane road to a five and that was going to cover up some underground utility installations, we would have borne the cost to move the private utilities. It's interesting about this. Think of loop 88. The city had multiple utilities down there in state rightaways had right to be there, but the state needs to build a loop. We agree. We support it. we pay to move our utilities out of the way, still in their rightway, but not blocking their roads. So, that one was really quiet and then it blew up fast. Ultimately, it died. Um, I do think it was likely a special interest bill, but I expect we're going to see that come back up again, probably in a regular session in the future. How did Luk do? I would suggest to you that Lok did phenomenally well in the legislative session. We sought four specific bills to be filed on our behalf and we ultimately agreed to support two additional bills. We didn't sponsor them. We supported them, but they matched our legislative agenda. So, we filed the project financing zone bill. Representative Ter put that out there. It passed. We are the only new PFZ in the state of Texas. We're the only one that came out of the legislature. We ultimately ended up with Corpus Christi tagged onto our bill as an amendment. That was not a new PFC. It was fixing the fact that remember these are three mile circles. If the center of your circle is on the beach, half of your circle's in the ocean. So, this fixed that for them. But in terms of new bills, new PFZs, we got the only one. Um, we sought to extend the rebate or to extend the period of time for which we could qualify to get a convention hotel rebate. We currently have that authority. It expires in August of 2027. We wanted to go ahead and push the deadline out. That's the only one we didn't get. It died. We got the PFZ. There were a lot of discussions which one is more timely, more important, the PFC bill. So, we'll bring that back in the next legislative session and keep moving. The third bill, this was to take the PUC, public utility commission, out of the loop when you've got a city to city water or wastewater contract and somehow there's a dispute. So, that was passed. It was originally filed as a House bill by Representative Ter. That bill didn't make it out of committee. we were able to get it as a friendly amendment to one of Senator Perry's bills, Senate Bill 740. So, we have that. So, council, as you continue to have the request to try to assist our neighboring cities, just know now that that's between you as a city council and whomever we're working with as a city council and the PUC is not in the middle of it. Um, number four was being able to exempt certain information, certain meetings that are largely related to cyber security from the public information act. That passed. That one started off and it was a good bill. By the time it went through the House and into the Senate and got done, the list of supporters on that went up exponentially. This has been a gap in how some of that information is treated. And I think our state recognized certain things not do not benefit the public if we have to lay them up on the dice. So three out of four. It's a tremendous record, way higher than the overall success of the legislature. the two bills that we supported. Um, first responders memorial loop filed by Senator Perry on behalf of some of our public responder groups that passed. And there's a portion of the South Loop, the new South Loop 88 that will also be named the First Responders Memorial Loop. Um, that bill will go into effect here very soon and probably signage hopefully by late this year, but not certain. The second one, um, also a bill Senator Perry filed. Um, this is going to be very helpful to us. This allows a TEI or a TIFF board or a PID board to have virtual meetings and it will only require one of their members, whoever the chair or the president is, to be at the physical location. Public is still welcome. public has access to all the virtual participation as well, but we struggle to get quorums on a lot of these boards. Many of the board members because they have to represent property ownership. They're not here. So, it's hard to do that. Um, some of our tiffs, we have our legislative delegation as members and it's hard for them to always be able to make the meetings. So, Senator Perry put that one up. Um, we provided support to it. We got those passed. So, however you want to look at it, three out of four that we went after or five out of six in total. Love had a very, very good legislative session. Taking us to July the 21st, there is now a special session teed up. Um, these six items that are on here are what is in the current call for the for the special session. These are all also the vetos that Governor Abbott issued. So, these six will come back up when they convene on July 21st. Special sessions are limited to 30-day duration and they are limited to only taking up items that the governor has listed on the call list. Takes you to the last comment there. There is a high probability that more items will be added. the two that we see and hear the most often potential redistricting of the state congressional redistricting and the taxpayer funded lobbying item. So, Mayor Council, that's the conclusion of what ended up being a pretty chaotic session, but if you've got any questions, I'll take them. If not, I'll be quiet. Well, let me uh speak for myself, and I'm sure I speak for the council, too, when I say this. We appreciate all your hard work. Uh this was my first opportunity to be involved in the legislative uh process since I've been on the city council and certainly as a mayor because it only comes around every two years, thank goodness. And um uh you know, you've always heard the phrase you you really don't want to see how the sausage is made. But you, three of us at least had a very firsthand see at seeing how that sausage was made and for our staff and especially Jarrett to keep track of those thousands and thousands of bills and how quickly they could move and change. You thought you had something nailed down on one day and I'd get a text from him in the middle of the night almost or something like that that this is all changed now and here's we've got to go down there and we've got to go talk to these people. So, he really stayed on top of it. But I've also got to say a special thanks to um our legislative uh group down there. Carl Ter worked extremely hard with us and well with us, met with us, and he has excellent staff to get the changes we need to some of those bills uh to make sure that uh I mean, he's already said it. We came out so well on what we needed to see happen for this city out of that legislative session. And it's um a tribute to his uh to Jarrett's hard work, our H Scarboro team that worked for us uh down there, but especially to our uh our legislators down there, Carl and his office and uh Parker. I just want to give a shout out to Parker Strathato and how hard he worked on stuff um down there. And uh of course having the speaker of the house didn't hurt anything at all. And he worked very well with us. and Bob Duncan, his uh assistant there, worked very well with us. And of course, it's always great to have Charles Perry who who's been involved in water, which is so essential to us here, but he also listened to us. Um, and often times we we had to get him to understand why we were for certain things. You know, initially it didn't it wasn't apparent to him, but he listened well to us and and understood what it was about some of the things we wanted to see passed that was important to us and worked very hard for us. So, we are very fortunate um to get what we got out of this. Uh and I also uh want to appreciate our staff for coming forward with our cyber security bill, something that they saw. They uh realized this was an issue that could come up for the protection of our city and our members. And we got the bill written and introduced and you know, something nobody else um thought to put forward, but it got the support of almost everybody down there. They saw how important cyber security was for us. so that um bad actors out there can't get access to information about our infrastructure so they can attack it or our policy limits so they know what they need to ask us for when they make their demands. We now can keep that out of public information. So this was a great session for us. Um as uh you know we had to make several trips down there uh but had great support here, great support down there and I I thank you. Anybody else weigh in too if they want to? All right. Thank you very much. Let's take a brief break here and we'll take about 10-minute break. We'll be back. If everyone can get seated, we're going to start here again in a minute. All right, we'll now take up our ceremonial items. And at this point, I'm going to call on Reverend Father Alexander Cordos of the St. Katherine of Alexandria Orthodox Mission to lead us in our invocation, followed by our mayor, Pro Tim, leading us in our pledges of allegiance to our United States and our Texas flag. Would you please stand as you're able? Thank you. Good afternoon to everyone, mayor, members of the councils. In Zart's tradition, we are going to do introduction prayers over all of you and I will use this opportunity to say a prayer also for those who departed from among us who perish in the floods in Texas because I need and I think that we need to keep their memory alive and then you can continue with your work for the city of Lubok. Blessed is our God always now and ever and the ages of ages. Amen. Glory to thee our God. Glory to thee. Oh heavenly kings that comfor who art every fill us all things treasure of blessing giver of life come and abide in us and cleanse us from our every impurity and save our souls a good one. Holy God holy mighty holy mortal have mercy on us. Holy God holy mighty holy mortal have mercy on us. Holy God holy mighty holy mortal have mercy on us. Glory to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit now and ever and the ages of ages. Amen. Oh most holy trinity, have mercy on us. Oh Lord, cleanse us from our sins. Oh master, pardon our transgression. Oh holy one, visit and heal our infinity for thy name's sake. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Now and ever and all the ages of ages. Amen. Our Father, who art in heavens, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us daily bread, and forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, now and ever into the ages of ages. Amen. Let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy. Oh God of spirits and all flesh who has trampened down death and overthrown the evil and give given life to thy world. Do thou the same Lord give rise to the soul of thy depart servant who perish in the floodings in Texas in a place of brightness a place of refreshment a place of repose where all sickness s and sorrow have fled away. Pardon every transgression which they have committed whether by word or deed or thought. For thou art the good God and lovest mankind, because there is no person who lives yet and yet not does not sin. For thou only art without sin, thy rightness to all eternity, and thy word is truth. For thou are the resurrections alive and repose of thy servants who perish in the floodings in Texas who are fallen asleep. for Christ our God and unto thee was thy glory together with thy father who from everlasting and thine all holy good and life spirit now and ever into the ages of ages. Amen. Let us pray to the Lord Lord have mercy. Oh Lord Jesus Christ, the true unwaving light, thou who has said where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Thou who this make wise the lovely fishermen and by the descent of the Holy Spirit this render them God and heralds of thy divine gospel. Do thou thyself or most merciful master vouches vouches us to receive the thanksgiving which we humbly offer unto thee this day and send down thy heavenly grace upon all he assembled. Yet do thou bless and sanctifies all us all. Because thy light which ever shines to limits the hearts of those who has gathered here according to thy holy will. For thou thee sanctifies as of thine apostle breathing upon them the spirit of concord and godly counsel that we likewise bearing on one another's burdens might fulfill thy law and in brother love be increased in knowledge and in every good work. Bestow upon us, we beseech this a spirit of wisdom and of understanding. Opens eyes of our hearts that we may walk according to thy divine will and graciously hearken unto our supplication that with one voice and one heart we may glorify him thine all holy and most blessed name unto the ages of ages. Amen. Glory to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit now and ever into the ages of ages. May our Lord Jesus Christ who is blessing everything bless all here present bless the city of Lubok and its people and its representative for being good and love as mankind always now and ever into the ages of ages. Amen. Thank you so much. Now let us join together to honor our American and Texas flag. I aliance to the flag of United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The Texas flag to the Texas one state. Thank you. [Music] Thank you, Father, for reminding us. And uh we'll begin here just uh because people are concerned about our neighbors, our fellow citizens, and and all that they've gone through down in central Texas. U you know, Texas stands together and our city is ready to assist those uh areas that have been devastated. uh property damage, loss of life, injury uh in any way that we can. Uh we've been in conversation with uh many people down there and are prepared to send help from our city to them as they requested, as they need it. Um as they've sent help to us when we've needed it in the past. encourage all love citizens to not only pray for those people but to find a way to contribute uh either through some agency like the American Red Cross, Salvation Army or others uh who are working very hard to assist those people now who are without homes uh without food. Um so we we remember them uh we are bound together uh as fellow citizens and neighbors u and love and concern. So, uh, let's just remember them. All right. We'll now call the meeting to order and we'll take up citizen comments. According to our city council rules, any citizen wishing to appear in person before a regular meeting of the Lok City Council on any matter posted on our agenda may sign up and provide us uh uh with their name and uh whatever it is they want to speak on, the item they want to speak on no later than 2 pm uh on the day of the meeting. So, uh, please remember when you come forward to give us your name and you'll have three minutes to make your statement. There will be a bell rung when you have 30 seconds left and a final bell rung when you need to wrap up your comments. We have two people today wanting to make comments. Uh, Jessica Saxton, uh, Jessica, if you would come forward. Thank you so much. My name is Jessica Saxon. I'm a civil rights advocate and litigator from Washington DC. I need to provide notice to the council today. This is in accordance with USCS rules of civil procedure as well as rule 17 and rule 20 of the United States Supreme Court. The Constitution of the United States Supreme Court is um the United States of America is the overarching requirements that every state must follow. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. States cannot enact their own alternative legislation in substitution for the guarantees of the constitution. That would mean that the state laws are more powerful than our constitution. Clause one of amendment five states that no person should be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on presentment or indictment by a grand jury. However, the state of Texas unfortunately has enacted its own alternative legislation that permits prosecuting attorneys and police officers to charge by way of information as opposed to indictment. That is unconstitutional. An emolement violation is when you pay a public official to commit a crime. There are two areas in the constitution that enforces this. The first one is article one section 10 that states no state shall create any law that shall impair the obligation of contract. Police officers, prosecutors, and judges are all under contract. A contract to perform based upon the oath or affirmation that they took. The contract perimeters are defined within the Constitution of the United States. So when the state enacts its own laws that directs their agents to obey or disobey the Constitution of the United States, that would be a violation of article 1, section 10. The second one is the 14th amendment where you'll find the reinforcement of this issue that states, "No state shall create or enforce any law that shall abridge the privileges or immunity of United States citizens." The privileges and immunities of United States citizens are at a minimum those that are enumerated in the bill of rights in the first 10 amendments. The state of Texas unfortunately has enacted a law in its inferior constitution that is permitting public officials law enforcement whom you pay to violate the Constitution of the United States. As a result, there's an inordinate in inordinate amount of of people currently imprisoned in uh Texas illegally and unconstitutionally. Tana Downing is preparing to litigate this issue at the United States Supreme Court on behalf of more than 700,000 people currently in prison here in America unconstitutionally. I'm here today to provide you notice that if you continue to pay public officials to break the law, that criminal sanctions can come from that. Officials must be made aware that paying people to disobey the law, the United States Constitution, is an a moment violation. It is illegal and it is const unconstitutional. I'm asking you honorable individuals to please take a look at clause one, amendment five, confirm what I'm saying to be true, and direct your public officials to act in a lawful constitutional manner consistent with the obligations that are codified in the Constitution of the United States. I do have something that I'd like to put on the record, please. Tanawa Downing. Did I say that right, Mr. Downing? Tanawa. Tanawa. All right. And you're speaking to agenda item 6.1. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll explain the reason why. Okay. Please, please do because it wasn't so much. Thank you. So, my name is Tan. I'm the civil rights litigator that Miss Saxon was just referring to. The reason why we're here is this is the 16th stop of 55 that we're doing over the next 40 days to try to bring awareness to this issue so we can get it addressed. Uh you guys uh pay for the the the police, the police services, the county commissioners, they pay for the jail and the sheriff. If the police are choosing to rely upon an interior state statute that is in violation of constitution, then they go out and do that work, then that would mean that you guys are paying for it. So when you uh have a budget item here such as 6.1 that's requesting budget for law enforcement to be able to perform their work, we need to let you know that we need to correct their behavior to act in a constitutional manner. Now Texas has created a law in its impair constitution that that allows for the prosecuting attorney or the police officers to charge by information by their discretion. That is not lawful because you can never ever ever use discretion with regard to one's obligations. obligations must be performed. Otherwise, you're using your your discretion abusively to break the law. And so, uh, Texas, uh, is not the only state. There's actually 28 states that, uh, that currently allow for prosecuting attorneys to charge by information or indictment. And I'll let you know that with regard to information, Title 18 subsection 555 says that information can only be used as a charging instrument for non-negrims, for misdemeanors, not even for felonies. So the fact that the state of Texas has that in the in its constitution is actually in violation of better laws. So uh the law that that applies to criminal conspiracy with regard to public officials, what it says, it says that any person who having knowledge of any of the wrongs conspired to be done and who have the power to prevent or aid in the prevention of the commission's aim neglects or refuses to do so may be joined to dispense the action. We're not trying to get anybody into trouble at all. Don't don't get us wrong. We're here because we want to provide notice to you guys and hopefully we can all work together to avoid need further litigation. Uh but once being made aware of this situation, you do have an obligation now to take action to correct this behavior. Uh because the only thing that makes America America is the Constitution and we want to make sure that we get that preserved because when we don't ball the Constitution, we have a breakdown fracturing of this nation and we don't want to see that happen anymore. So, I'm going to end it with this that we have been in communication with uh Cash Patel, director of the FBI, as well as also Senator Kennedy, and they do agree that the Constitution is the supreme law of land, and when state judges or county prosecutors fail to follow federal law, they are in violation of this supremacy clause, they are committing a crime, and they are subject to arrest. Uh so um I would ask you guys to please uh discharge the duties of your office, fulfill the obligations and promises that you made to the people of the state of Texas and let's support and defend the Constitution United States against all foreign domestic. Thank you so much. God bless. All right. We'll now take I I have no other uh citizen comments. So we'll take up item uh number 5.1 on our agenda. the minutes from our June 10th, 2025 regular city council meeting. Is there a motion to approve item 5.1 motion and a second? Any discussion or any changes or alterations or I see none. So all in favor let me know by saying I. I. Any oppose say no. Hear none. Motion is approved. We'll now take up our consent agenda and there's not been a request to pull any items today. So, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? I see none. All in favor, please let it be known by saying I. I. Any oppose say nay. I hear none. All right. The consent agenda is approved unanimously. We'll now take up our regular agenda and we'll start with item 7.1 board appointments to the appointments advisory board, building board of appeals, Canadian River Municipal Water Authority Board of Directors, Citizens Traffic Commission, Keep Love Beautiful Advisory Committee, Libraries Board, Lach Water Advisory Commission, Model Codes and Construction, uh Advisory Board, Parks and Recreation Board, and the permit and license appeal board. I will now call on the city secretary, Miss Pos, to provide the briefing on this matter and the recommendations of the appointments advisory board and council subcommittee. Thank you, mayor. I will read down the list. Um, for the appointments advisory board, we have Margaret Kelly being recommended for reappointment in a district 5 position. Keith Patrick in a mayor rep position being recommended for reappoint. Um, in Kathleen Burrell's position, a district 5 rep, it's being recommended for Tyler Young to replace her. In a district 1 rep, Ruby Gonzalez is being recommended to be replaced by Margarita Aliveres. In a district 2 rep, Karen Mitchell is being recommended to be replaced by um Andrea Parker. Mary Gerlac in a district three rep position is being recommended to be replaced by Tiffany Robinson. Building Board of Appeals, we have Ricky Lawrence in an electrician position and Christina Weir in an architect position, both being recommended for reappoint. Canadian River Municipal Water Authority Board of Directors, James Collins being recommended for reappoint. Citizens Traffic Commission, Marian Maguire being recommended for reappoint. Christina Gonzalez being recommended to be replaced by Dylan Edwards. and Jodie Slaughter being recommended to be replaced by Gilbert Kintterero. Keep love beautiful Advisory Committee. Uh Rodney Sha Benson being recommended to be replaced by Allison Hoffman. Amanda Olivo being recommended to be replaced by Jacqueline Taylor. Libraries Board Eddie Kirkpatre in a mayor rep position being recommended to be replaced by Alexander Salter. Love water advisory commission. We have Jay House in a representative of a water organization position and Theodore Cleveland also in a representative of a water organization position. Both being recommended for reappoint. We have Rusty Smith in a citizen position being recommended for reappoint. For model codes and construction advisory board, we have Blake Collins in an electric electrician position is being recommended to be replaced by Kendall Wood. This um would be for a current term and for the term beginning December 1st as this term was about to expire for the park and recreation board being recommended for Morgan Guffy's replacement is Kim Davis. And finally for the permit and license appeal board we have Tom Nichols in a law enforcement position and Jillian Naba in a water industry position both being recommended for reappointment. All right. Thank you, Mr. P. Is there a motion to appoint the individuals as recommended? Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? I see none. All in favor of these appointments, uh, say I. I. Any oppose? Say nay. I hear none. Motion is approved unanimously. We'll now take up appointments to the Civic Locor board of directors. And I call on city secretary again to provide a briefing on this matter and recommendations of the appointments advisory board and the council subcommittee. Thank you mayor. Um for this one we have Christy Cage being recommended for reappointment. Uh for Sammy Prather's position. Um Alice Lazada is being recommended for that replacement. And then for James Eper's position there are three recommendations. Jennifer Martinez, Daryl Holland, and Claire Lavell. And um that is my briefing on this one. Mr. Mayor, at this time I'd like to make a motion to replace James Eper as he is not uh eligible for reappoint with our subcommittee's recommendation which is Claire Lavell um from district six. Thank you Dr. Wilson. Is there a second? Second. All right. Is there any discussion? All right. I'm looking to see Dr. Wilson. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to um I know that the mayor made a recommendation on this as well as a subcommittee had recommended um and agreed with the appointments advisory board. And I just wanted to state for the record there was really no difference. between the two recommendations. There was no um one that outshoned the other. It was simply based on the fact that Miss Lavell had been waiting to get on this board, I believe, um Courtney since like 2018 19. Yes, you heard many many many years. And I think sometimes we get into the uh the habit, myself included, of appointing friends and going out and hunting people down and we forget those that actually have applied and would like to be on a board. And so I've heard people who've reached out and said, "I've sat waiting to get a board appointment for five, six, seven years." And then they lose interest. And we don't want people to lose interest in our city and what we're doing. And so, um, I have now made it a habit for myself and I know Councilman Harris was in agreement that we should start using our preference list and actually look for people who are interested and have made those interests known. So that's why we recommended Miss Claire. Mayor Pim, I'm glad to hear that the council is recognizing how important it is to have individuals that have been on these waiting lists for a very long time. Um, for me, the other thing that is also pressing is that we make sure that we have these folks that are waiting, but also that we are including folks from districts that are not representative their of their own and that we always have folks from a variety of of districts because we have different perspectives and we need to make sure that we acknowledge that. So, I appreciate that we have finally uh made it a point to include folks that have been waiting and wanting to serve and we appreciate them for their interest. All right. I'll just say that my and I have nothing against Miss Lavel and I appreciate the fact that she has applied for it. My concern is this board uh needs to have the kind of expertise I think Mr. Holland brings to it is the uh manager of the Cactus Theater who has done an incredible job of bringing entertainment and knows how to manage those events and I think that's the kind of expertise that is specifically needed on this board and uh so it's it's uh I don't actually know Miss Lavel. I have nothing against her and I appreciate her uh application but I just thought that he brought a lot more to this position and what this uh board actually does and is charged with doing. uh his expertise uh in that area uh is important for the board. So that's why I've supported him as uh the nominee for that position and I will be voting for him. Dr. Wilson. Uh and I apologize. I'm going to have to fix my motion just a little bit because the the city secretary called me out and said I missed the other two. And so as part of that motion as to fix it and you can tell me city attorney how you want me to do that. I also need to including the civic lobby board um mentioned Miss Christy Cage who is um eligible for reappointment. We would like to reappoint her as well and Mr. Sammy uh or Sammy Prather is was not eligible for reappointment and the subcommittee had recommended Alice Lozada from district one. You Dr. Wilson, you can either do it through amending your current motion as long as you have a second or they can be two different motions. Move through on this one and then just do another motion for the other two. However you'd like to do it, Dr. Wilson, I can just amend it if anybody's in agreement with that. So, I believe it was seconded by uh Councilman Rose and so did do you agree with the amendment? Just to be clear, the amendment, the amended motion is to approve the two reappoint. Well, the one reappoint, Miss Lozada and Miss Lavell. Is that right? Yes. Well, there's three people, correct? Yes. The reappoint, Miss Lozada. I got you. Yes, that is the that is the motion that's currently been been made and been seconded. All right. Any further discussion on the amended motion? I see none. So all in favor of the amended motion, please let it be known by saying I. I. Any opposed say nay. Nay. Who were the nays? That's two. Just two nays. All right. So that motion amended motion passes. We'll now take up item 7.2 two to consider appointments to the electric utility board of directors and I will call on the city secretary to provide the briefing on this matter and recommendations of the appointments advisory board and the council subcommittee. Thank you, mayor. And this recommendation actually comes to you directly from the electric utility board. Um they are recommending Mike Stevens to replace Lewis Harbble, who has resigned from the board. All right. All right. Is there a motion? Is there a second? All right. Is there any discussion? Again, I will uh state my objection to this particular nominee for the board. Uh Mr. Stevens. Um and nothing personal against Mr. Stevens. U I know him pretty well and he's a good man. Uh but Mr. Stevens makes his living uh working for political um uh people who run for positions. uh some of us up here on the deas working for us or against us and he earns his living from that. Um I think that calls into question the independence of someone's judgment uh in a situation like this on a very important board where I think we need that real independence. Uh so in the interest of transparency and accountability um I think he's not a good choice uh for this particular board. Uh but again want to make clear that my opposition to him is nothing personal against him. Any further discussion? Mayor Potam, my take is a little bit different having, you know, sometimes our council is not present and for me it's important that whoever serves, whoever we agree on is going to be attending council meetings because it has certainly not been reflected from our council. Any further discussion? All right. All in uh in favor of uh appointing Mike Stevens to the Electric Utility Board, please let him be known by saying I. I. Any oppose? Say nay. Nay. And that motion passes unanimously. I mean 601, sorry. All right. We'll now take up item 7.3 and conduct a public hearing regarding the land use assumptions and capital improvements plans associated with the 2025 impact fee restudy. As a reminder, the purpose of public hearing is to hear from members of the public regarding a particular issue. In this case, the uh um the committee's report. And I'm going to call on uh the city engineer uh John Turpin to provide a summary uh of the subject of this uh public hearing. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Uh before I get started, I would like to recognize our uh capital improvements advisory committee members that are here. We have Clay Inger, uh Thomas Payne, and then Chris Barry is also in the crowd who is our current chair. So, with that, uh before I get started on my slide presentation, it has many updates that y'all asked for. Y'all had a lot of questions that we didn't have answers to last time, so I will get to those, but a lot of those aren't specifically for this public hearing today. And so for this public hearing today, what this is all about is our impact fee report, which basically what we need to talk about today is land use assumptions and our capital improvements plan. And then finally the seak recommendation, which is the next item that y'all will take action on, which is our resolution. So this is not setting any rates today. That's what I want to everybody in our crowd here that we have here public. U this does not set rates. What we are looking at specifically is land use assumptions and our capital improvements plan from the impact fee study. And hopefully I can really make this clear today on how everything goes. So with that, I'll start my presentation. So the first piece of the the puzzle here was uh we had to update all of our annex annexation areas. Um this shows our new map. Um specific areas that had uh quite a bit of annexation were A, F, E, um and there were some in D and as well as some in C um that were updated from that 2020 plan. So this just captures and and adds the new annexed areas to this map. So, as far as our impact fee components, our land use assumptions, what really what goes into this, I'm going to break this down and make it even more simplified than this slide shows. So, really what we're looking at is residential and non-residential use. It says employment up there, but it's truly residential, non-residential use. And residential, you have single family and you have multif family. Um, with non-residential, you've got three. You got basic, service, and retail. So retail is pretty self-explanatory. Service is like your offices, your schools, and then finally your basic is industrial and parks. And each one of those as you as you move up has more traffic demand. So when you you're talking basic service and retail. So moving more into the land use assumptions, a big part of this is that growth rate that we assumed. So on the first uh study we had a 2.5% growth rate. Really looking at our life as a city and really looking at what we've done over the many years and having discussions with our capital improvements advisory committee, it was determined that a 2.2% growth rate was more appropriate. And so what I want y'all to hear here is that this 2.2% 2% growth rate really affects the entirety of this plan from the land use assumptions to the C capital improvements plan because that's the assumption of how much are we going to gain in each individual area for single family dwellings for our apartment complexes for your individual retail industrial etc. And so it affects that's the the biggest part of this that it affects. And really on both parts of this plan, we look specifically at a 10-year window. And that's what it this impact fee study really does. It looks at a 10-year window and then has to assume how many roads are going to have to build within that 10 year. Uh and looks at specifically the growth. And so this this is a a rehash of the map y'all seen previously. Um it it does show each individual area. I'm not going to go over these areas, but I will get a little bit more in depth on the next slide because I really want y'all to understand what we're talking about when we do all these calculations. And so on the next slide, we've got the So, we'll we'll just go for instance with the first line area A, we have that 6,711. So, how do you how do you reach that? um that is specifically area A times your transportation demand factor. And so what is that transportation demand factor? Okay, that transportation demand factor is vehicle miles per unit. So if we say we're going to have 6,711 houses, that's your unit. You multiply that by your transportation demand factor. That's basically uh the amount of cars that's assumed within your PM peak. So this is assumed at 4 to 6 PM. You multiply that and that gets your vehicle miles for single family residential in area A. The next one is the same calculation of multif family, but this transportation manufacturer because it's per unit for an apartment complex for a multif family is lower. it's assumed lower because you won't have as many trips coming from it. Does that make sense? And so the the one that gets a little bit more convoluted, but it's really not. It's just broken down by square footage. And so every one of your non-residential units are by the thousand square feet. That is the unit. And so when you look at the 143,000, you divide that by by a th00and come up with 143. And then you multiply by that transportation demand factor to get into vehicle miles. And why is this important? So if I come all the way down to the end, you do all those calculations, you get let's say for area A 48,807 for the vehicle miles within area A. That becomes your denominator within your equation of the impact. Any questions on that? Okay. Yes, sir. Yes, I'm sure there will be questions. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, response. So, John, um the TDF that's being utilized in this study or or the updated study, is the TDF changed from the original study? Yes, they have, sir. It's it's now the 11th edition um manual of the love. And I'm sorry I I might have to ask. I know you don't want any, but I do not remember what the love stands for. Yes. So since the last go around the 11th edition of the transportation engineers manual it trip generation manual has been updated. So it's new rates for all these uses that we're now accounting for. Do you know off the top of your head what the TDF was um when impact fees were originated? Not have the previous versions now. I guess I'm I'm asking the question is why would we assume I'm I'm assuming they went up and I'm asking that a question. Why would we assume that those miles generated would have changed in a single family home? Council Collins, I can speak to that specifically because I did look at now I don't remember what the current are, but we could definitely get that to y'all. Um, so basically in some instances it did go up. In other instances actually went down. Um, as they gather data, uh, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, they're using the technology we have today. these mobile phones that are sitting with you, they're looking, they're they're seeing specifically what travel is happening to each one of these areas and and it gets updated uh periodically. And so we're on the 11th edition today. We were previously on the 10th edition. And so some did go up, but some went down. So, retail specifically, um, as you get up to those higher square footages, those went down substantially for the higher square footages because it's assumed you're going to go there and you're going to spend time and you're going to utilize their infrastructure to travel between, let's say, uh, Canyon West where you would go to like a Costco and then you might go over to a Cabela's or any number of those stores and stay within that area. So you're not actually making a traffic impact on our roadway at that point. And so so for there's several updates. Yes, sir. Well, for the five categories that you're showing uh showing us on this slide, could you provide those numbers to us in the next few days? Yes, sir. We can. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Rose, go back one, John. Yes, sir. Uh I don't know if I'm missing something. it. So the the TDF factor on multif family is is lower than a single family home. How are they sir coming up with that? Can you explain that to me? Uh I think it's specifically because multif family assumes a lot of apartment complexes and when you get into apartment there are typically smaller dwellings. Um and so it's assumed that there's less people there within those dwellings. Okay. But there would be many more units. It would be per unit. Yes. Not okay. Yes. So this vehicle miles number over on the far right under A 48,87 that is derived by multiplying column A 6711 by 2.82. the second column 354 by 1.17 all the way across and that's how and then yes in the basic service and retail you divide those by a thousand and multiply that by that figure and that I'm not and then you sum all those numbers Mr. Collins and I neither one want to do math up here, but I would assume that number is is the result. That's how you get that. Yes, sir. Yeah. And you sum all those numbers together and that gives you your vehicle miles per area. Okay. And so it's it's formula based and the statistic that you rely on, the TDF comes from a a manual that is transportation engineers. Okay. And everybody use anybody who's doing this kind of uh assessment uses that same manual. This is what's laid out in in our uh local government code we have to do. All right. So, it's very standardized. All right. Any other questions at this point? Okay. Proceed. Okay. So, this next slide, um it looks daunting, but really I'm going to take this a piece at a time. So, if we start with let's say the first row or the first line that goes across the total capacity uh plan cost. This is what I'm going to refer to as the universe of projects. So, if you took our entire city or in this case the entire area, so area A, and we didn't assume a 10-year window, we just assumed that we wanted it all built out. That is that cost. Okay. Now, if you go to the recoverable cost of total roadway capacity plan, this is where we get into that 10-year window. So that 128,522427 on area A, that would be your 10-year window. That's what we need to build within the next 10 years. That is the cost. And then you're allowed to add in your financing because obviously being a city, we're not going to have 128 million to just come up with to so we're going to have to finance that. So you're allowed to add it in your financing, but then chapter 395 actually requires us to cut that number by 50%. When we do that, it is automatically assumed that we are going to take on 50% of that. Now the piece that we are talking about that could potentially affect the rates in the future is that other 50%. So y'all are allowed to set the percentage therein. And so that's really what I want to hit home here is that that 50% is already cut out. The city's taken on 50% of that and then the other percentage is up to y'all's determination. So if I keep going down and this is so we get down to that 83 million 695467 and you divide that by our vehicle miles now you have that max accessible fee. That's how you get to that. So if you take that it comes down to that 1714 in the case of area A and in the case of I show I'm showing you the green one which is the uh single family residential if you multiply that by that transportation demand factor for single family residents at 2.82 that will give you if you were at the max fee that would give you 4,833 as the max fee for area A. Does that make sense? And each one of these is done the exact same way. So, I really want to just make sure that everybody's following me on this. I don't think I don't think we did a good job of of really telling youall how how this worked, but I really want to make sure that I'm hitting this home this time. Okay. Any questions? So, yeah, hang on just one minute there. So 2025 max accessible impact fee per service unit, not per service area. It's per service unit. What's the service unit? Where are you looking at service? The blue. Oh, the service the service unit is the vehicle miles. Okay. So it's the that's the 83 million divided by the 48. Yes. And that was the previous where we said the denominator. Okay. So if I back it up just one slide and show you area A where we did those calculations to for all the assumptions of the growth in this area that's how many vehicle miles were produced. Okay. So go back to the Yes sir. So then I don't want to be dense here, but what's the difference between the max accessible impact fee per service unit and max fee per single family dwelling? That's that's the one where you have to now take that transportation demand factor again. Okay, and multiply. All right, I got you. So the TDF, and I'll show it to you on the next slide. The TDF for you go back in and you back fill some of those numbers. You go back to that same transportation demand factor. Yes, sir. Do you work off of an Excel sheet or what do you do to get all these are? Yes. All of these were worked off Excel spreadsheets. Yes, sir. Very good. Thank you. Yeah. Keep going. So, uh we we showed many of these comparison slides last time and really what I want to hit home is the council has options to be anywhere and in between. Um we do still show um our C our capital improvements advisory committee's uh recommendation on this slide as well as you can see in the gr so that that would be the yellow bar um for single family. The green bar is the max fee that's as high as we could possibly go. the uh kind of off color blue um that it says love 2025 current and seak average. So what we did there, we just wanted to throw an option at y'all and see what your thoughts were um where we took and average between our current rate and what the CX recommendation was. And that that's what was brought to you. And you'll see on many of these slides that kind of brings us more into the middle of the pack. on these comparison slides um as opposed to on some of them we're up on the higher end of the threshold. Um and then lastly uh the the kind of darker blue is our current rate for single family. Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I was just looking at uh area F being greater than area A in its greatest number. Yes. Um and you may have covered this already, but can you for my sake cover that again? Why is why is a single family home different in one part of town than the other? Yes, sir. So area F, what I want to explain about area F is when we really looked at the numbers and the assumption of growth and what we saw for permits coming out of each area. Area, I believe it's A and E, which are the the two highest right now showed a lot more permits, a lot more growth than area F has recently. And so area F has less growth, but it still has a big demand for your capital improvements projects. And so that's why area F is actually your highest impact fee uh currently. And and I do want to say all the comparison slides that we're showing y'all are um off of area F, which is the highest impact fee. Um our lowest would be about 40% of area F. Ask your question, Mr. Collins. Have you got another question? You're good. Okay. Okay. Well, uh my question again is when you have down there under the yellow one love 2025 50%. Okay. Recommendation that's 50% of the 50%. It is 50% of the 50%. Because we are thinking 25% is what we got. It is 25% of the total project cost. We are on the hook for 50%. This is not a recommendation at this point of a 50% rate. 50% of the 50%. Thank you very much. All right. I know that's confusing to a lot of people and really got to hit that home that this is it's 25% of the total project cost. Um but it is 50% of the max total that we're allowed to charge the max. Yes. The part we have to cover. Okay. Okay. So this just again it's it's going down uh through each one of these comparison slides. I won't bel labor the process unless you all want to really look at each individual one. Uh you can see it slightly lowers uh by doing the average but the seak recommendation is everything is still there from the previous slides. Um all of the stuff or the comparison slides on the right take into account where people have water and wastewater impact fees on top of this. Um and we do not our ours are currently set at zero as y'all know. Um I will say other cities like um Amarillo uh I was actually speaking with Mr. Barry prior to coming in here and he actually told me that uh he had to do a uh traffic impact analysis and then he was charged upon or he had to actually build a portion of their road. So although they don't have an impact fee, they do have an avenue to get their affairs built. So, this is going I know Councilman Collins, you you talked about the coffee shop last time. I do have a slide later on that addresses specifically the coffee shop without the seating. Um, it is uh much lower in this new study than it had been previously. So, I'll I'll continue unless y'all have more questions. Please proceed. Yes, sir. So, 5,000 foot office building. As you can see, the we're getting closer to the middle on many of these. Uh 15,000 square foot retail. And then uh Councilman Glashine, I I tried to address uh this would be a a regular kind of United Supermarket. I do have a slide that actually addresses um sorry, the the larger of the two. I can't I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head, but and I also have one addresses like if an HB came in because they're much larger than all of those. So, so with that impact fee policies and decisions, uh our capital improvements advisory committee recommendations um they had recommended again to collect 50% of the 50%. So 25% of the total project um this is the same methodology as the previous ordinance. um service areas. G&H, they wanted to maintain a zero impact fee in those areas. Um they also wanted to have a six-month grace period. I did not have this previously and and Chris reminded me of this um for all building permits charged at the current rate. So, would like to see that. Um, I do want to I'll have a a slide after this where I can talk about uh many of the ordinances that I looked at and studied uh where there are a lot of options that y'all could choose uh in regards to uh currently platted properties. So, uh SAK also wanted to implement a formal onboarding process for our new capital improvement improvements advisory committee members. And then uh finally uh they wanted council to support specifically bond projects with our impact fees uh when at all possible. Um and they they want a a semian annual update of our of our use. Um and just as a reminder, council can Thank you. Uh, specifically, I'm going to I won't go over the more simplistic ones. Um, I will say Midland, uh, Chris made me aware that, uh, they actually have an adjacent road, uh, that has to be built in addition to collecting impact fees. I did not know that. Um, Odessa, they have a a rate structure that is actually they're slightly higher on commercial. So, their non-residential is higher and it also varies per area. So they have set percentages depending on which area you're in. Um Waco is a flat rate 67% on on both of their MA and these are all based off the mask max fees for each one of these. Denton uh ranges anywhere from 15 to 32% for single family residential dependent upon what area you're in. So they're actually changing their percentages on each area. Um, and same thing with their uh non-residential, but you can see that their non-residential is about half of their single family residential. So, uh, let's see. And then the last one that I really want to hit home on is McKenna. Um, and they are an example of where they not only change per service area, but on their commercial, they have set specific rates for specific uses. So if they wanted to per say um they wanted grocery stores set lower, they did that. Um I could I couldn't come up with a percentage for any of their commercial. So because it just ranged all over the place in the areas for they had a lot of areas that were zero impact fee for residential and then they had everything in between um for other areas. So then finally uh this this shows the single family residential slide. Again, it does uh point out the the new potential option of the average between the seak recommendation and uh the current uh and shows the difference there uh on that green slide all all the way to the end. Um from what they are currently and it's just more options I want to make sure y'all just trying to get y'all thinking about what y'all might want to do. Mr. Harris. Yes. Uh these fees were set what? Back in 2018, part of the 2040 plan. Uh the the study started in 2018 and then it was adopted in 2020. Okay. Are is there a freeze on the impact fees right now? A freeze on I mean the fees on I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Is there a freeze on the dispersment of No sir. No. Okay. Thank you. I think his question was is there a freeze, a current freeze on the uh dispersement or the use of the impact fees? Mr. Atinson? Um, no. No, sir. There's no freeze and we've recently used them over on East 19th for that project on that concrete roadway transferred to South Quaker. Yes. Yes. uh Upland Avenue 66 to 82nd. Two different service areas participate in that one as well. So there there's no freeze. There's a couple of potential projects pending right now. And addressing what Jared just brought up, we we have had a meeting uh about 114th Street and it looks like we are going to be able to push forward with the developers agreement for that project to get it from Upland to Al Cove. So, we're we're currently in the throws of trying to work through all the paperwork to get that on council. So, this is very busy. Um but it shows um basically uh every uh comparison that we talked about and it has an a few additional at the end that uh specifically address um the larger United Supermarkets and then finally the HB at the end. Um and it shows at our current rates the SEAK recommendation is the second down of those those tables. And then lastly, it would be the average between the CAC recommendation and the uh uh current rates. Mayor Pim, could you just for the sake of anybody watching, I know that you have the the service areas divided by A through H, but is there a way that you could tell the public, the service area, the districts. I don't think they're quite split up split up by district, but they're certainly um close. So, if I'm going just back up to our our map where it shows all the land use assumptions, but uh you have area C and D that are certainly within uh districts one and two. Um uh H which H and G which is uh approximately probably three maybe a little bit of four. Um you have uh area E which I think is almost all four. And then F uh I believe is uh Councilman or Councilwoman Jennifer Wilson five. And then a is really uh six and b would be a combination of six and one. Yes, that is correct. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, there there's definitely some overlap but in gener generally it's it's close. Thank you. So a good question would be how are those service areas determined? Uh basically it's uh a little more art than science, but it's it's held to a six mile uh trip length. And would you go back to the the frame that had the comparison of Leuk's rates to other cities right there? Yes. Yes, sir. So, um, on a single family house, it looks like the proposed rates sort of in there in between some of these other cities, um, uh, Odessa on the one hand or or Waco, even some of these places that have higher rates than us actually collect or assess less. I mean, how does that work when people are looking at that? They're like this one, we're kind of in the medium. The one before I think we're closer to the high end. Uh, I think you would go back one. Which one? Uh, just go back one more. Couple. Sorry. All right. Not that one. All right. There. The coffee shop. Your idea of your coffee shop. Put it pretty high. We're at the far end, the high end on that. We are closer to the higher end. Yes. Uh, so what you're saying is we could look at the different uses and set them. I We saw this say, "Well, that's problematic. Someone wants to open up a coffee shop and they're going to be paying one of the highest rates in the state even though we only collect 25% or half of the 50%. We could work with those figures as well. Absolutely. You can you can change the rate per use as long as you stay within that max fee. Mayor Pro Tim. Oh, I'm so sorry. Okay. Any other questions? Mr. Collins, so you just said that we could we could amend the rate per use. Yes. Yes, sir. And so I mean and and it doesn't become arbitrary of course because I guess we're going to have to do it across the board. But you know and and the reason that this coffee shop came came to the forefront of course again we're you know proposed at at possibly the highest in in this group of cities in the state. and and this is more than likely a a small business owner whether it's a coffee shop or a small restaurant or whatever and and seems to be very discouraging to our our small business which is the backbone of our the city of Lev. I mean we are small business. This is what and and I think I can speak for all seven of us when I say we are small business and this seems to be you know discouraging of that. So, so you can go through and take I mean and this is quite an exercise if we were to take it up but if we were to take up and say it definitely could be sir yes you can but you can yes but you can't is the specific example where they've done that on almost every commercial use what's are what's the timeline or what's the end date for the assessments that's being done from the 2020 um option. So, our our our goal today for schedulewise, um we already have the public hearing set up for the rates um on the 22nd and then we would need to have two uh council readings of the ordinance in probably uh early to mid October. We can't wait until that last August or a August, late August, sorry, I'm sorry. Yes, sir. Thank you. uh early early August is approximately when we need to have that done because there is a 10day effective window and with the new state law changes that have come into effect it could require us to go through that audit process or it would invalidate our current study. Say that again please. So, there's a 10day window after if you all took action on that second read, there's a 10day window to where it becomes effective, I believe. And Matt Matt could correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what my understanding is. And that 10day window is when they truly become effective. And if we get into that September time frame, the new law would apply to us. Well, sorry. Probably those details I could talk about in executive session, but adults and suspenders. What we would like to do is have this in effect prior to September 1st of 2025. And so another question I have as we go through this, we could have a we could have a rate for residential and we could have a rate for commercial that that is this 1% 2% zero. Correct? Yes, sir. Y'all it's at y'all's discretion to set it however you you view it. and and it can also be not only set for usage but set per area. Okay, Mr. Rose. Um, sorry, John. The as the mayor put it feels a little dense over here and I apologize, but um the the number on this coffee shop on on the very left, the love 2025 50% no indoor seating, the 614. Can you explain that to me? What? Sorry. Right next to the zero at Amarillo. Just 600. Oh, okay. Uh, yes, sir. Uh, the 614 number. Yeah, that's that's our current rate. Um, so if I if I'm going to go take you back to where I did those those comparisons. Uhhuh. Um, and these that's a little small for me to see, but you can see if we look at uh your current your current rates uh of where it is today on the old IT manual. This is where I was I was telling you all that some of these things have changed. Um, specifically coffee shops, they separated out no seating coffee shops from seating coffee shops. So, seated coffee shops are assumed by the square footage. Okay. Okay. And on the old IT manual, all you had was square footage. It didn't matter whether you had seating or not. So, we were charging the the no seating coffee shop probably arbitrarily high by the old IT manual, but it's all set by the IT manual. So, the the new manual actually sets out drive-through lanes for a nonseated coffee shop. So, all we have to know is the number of drive-through lanes. It tells us the how much traffic's coming through there. And there's a a large by rate. And you can see, look at the difference between the numbers that were given above for that same coffee shop and given below for the new no seating. Uh it is substantially lower for those nose seating coffee shops because it is assumed you're going somewhere else. You're just passing through and you're going to another place of business. For Starbucks, you're going to have a lot of people that go there to study, go there to meet to Um, so let's assume that they're actually potentially some of those are a destination stop when you have seating. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Dr. Wilson, you turn. So I think I'm super confused by any of that, John. I I mean, and I'm just saying this out loud because my brain cells are trying to wrap around that. So you're telling me that one coffee shop that has people sitting in the chair versus one that has them driving through is a different amount although the same car whether they're driving through the drive through in the same car parking in the parking lot that's the same amount of traffic to me whether they're driving through and they keep going or they park it for a little bit and then they leave. Isn't that the same amount of cars? It's it's their final trip. And so what what's happening is although they're coming through the coffee shop on those ones that have no seating, their final trip is another destination. So it's the total mileage, but yet we're assessing that business for them maybe going somewhere else that that's not a final destination. Like we're assessing a different number. So one it's it's passed by rate, man. That's that's what I'm trying to say. So, but the because we are assessing impact fees for roadways because because of traffic, increased traffic because of businesses, but yeah, we're charging them different even though the actual amount of cars that drive through the business are the same. They they are being charged differently because your final destination is probably either your workspace or your house, but the amount of cars that go through the business are the same because whether you just drive through the parking lot and go around or you drive and then you leave, it's the same. You see what I'm saying? Like the actual traffic for that business whether you sit down or you don't sit down is the same. You you are correct that the traffic coming in and out but what what the difference is is are people going there and choosing that as their destination stop. So are they going there sitting down having a cup of coffee staying there for an hour and then picking up but how does that change the impact on the road? That's I think that's what I'm trying to get at. That makes no sense to me. Those are great questions and I I'm going to go with your concept. It's the same number of cars that are hitting the road. Their their theory and we don't ultimately have to accept it, but the theory behind the way the IT is doing that, the one that doesn't have seating, part of the cost is being assigned to a different entity to wherever else they're going where they're presuming that if you've got seating, you're going to be there doing whatever you're studying. That was the end point of the trip. So they're assigning more of that total cost to the one with seating than they are to the one without seating. That just seems and that's absolutely something that these could be collapsed back into a to a single deal. It's it it is no more or no less cars. I totally agree with that. It's who's paying for which piece of that. Thank you, J. Mr. Collins. Couple other walk me through a simple scenario. A developer builds a strip center that's vacant. Does he pay an impact fee? Yes, sir. Five units vacant. It as soon as they pull their building permit, they they receive an impact fee. Yes, sir. And then we start to fill that and so we pay an impact fee. Again, my five unit strip center example, we pay five more impact fees. there there is an assumed number um and and there's assumed usages against that initial impact fee. So if they choose to put a facility in there, let's say they choose to put a restaurant with a drive-thru in there and it raises that number, there could be an added impact fee above and beyond what the initial was because of the choices of use of the facility. So yes, there is a potential for what you're talking about. Okay. So, let's let's stick with that building and and see that we have some turnover in that building. And now we're going to do a rena. Um, do we do we have another impact fee for the renovation? No, sir. No, not the only way you receive an impact fee potentially is if you completely tear down the building. So, if it's just a renovation or a current ordinance, there is no impact fee. So, a renovation in take that out any any location in the city. If there's a renovation, we've got a um office building that turns into a church. No impact fee. No impact fee. That's in our current order, sir. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Wilson. You want to try one more time at that? So, following up on Tim's question, so if a business goes into one of those corner slots in a shopping strip and then leaves, they didn't have to pay an impact fee because the the builder of the strip mall already paid it. But now, somebody's going to come in through Rena and actually put a drive-through window in. Are you going to charge that business an impact fee? At the beginning, what's assumed is a Shell building. So we don't know what their usage is and so we just charge for the show retail center and there are um usages within that. So if it jumps beyond those usages that's when we have to look at is there a potential that we need to charge an added impact fee for what they've done. So it could be the third or fourth business in that space but if they changed it and increased the pass through they would have to pay a new impact fee potentially. Yes ma'am. Okay. And the key is this is all on new construction. This is all 100% on new construction. Yes, sir. Things that are new. Well, so many assumptions go into this and that's that's the difficult thing. I I don't know what everybody else is feeling here, but I'm feeling the difficulty we have of even, you know, trying to understand how the assessment works. yet we're being asked to vote on something to say that it's it's good. And uh but I I look at some of the things and I think well the assumptions that are underlying it someone else has made those assumptions but I don't know if they're all that clear to me or how everybody else feels about it. Uh let me just ask and knowing that other cities have you know don't have a uniform rate they have differing rates and I don't know what this and I don't want to detract from the work that this group has done but I'm assuming they looked at those other alternatives of having different rates uh for dis different districts or different uses. um uh but what we're being presented with is just one uniform uh rate across the board. So I guess my last question is given all my questions if we decide not to adopt this in order to study it a little bit more. When would we be able once we figure out what we really want to do? When could we come back and do this again? Do we have to wait another five years? Can this be done on a yearly basis? What's the timetable we would have to be working off of? I I think it would be at y'all's discretion. Uh because we we did do the study which is required by the state law at the 5-year. Um so if y'all chose not to implement or change it, um I think we would be on the hook for another five years before we unless y'all wanted to do something earlier. Is that how you understand it, Mr. Atinson? I think what John said is correct. Let me be sure I understand your question, Mayor. There's just so much information, you know, presented to us. Sure. Trying to get our heads around it and having to make a decision. Um, you know, that's just if we choose not to go with the recommendation, we could go with just leaving it as it is. Uh well I guess that is kind of this the recommendation is to leave it as it is other than the new factors. Is that right? Other other than the higher max the higher max. Yes. So that would be the recommendation. Okay. Yes. So we could leave it as it is or adopt this or we could do away with them alto together while we try to figure out what we might really want to do and could we come back within a year and do that again. Come back and reinstate them if we found a better way to do this. Yes. Yes. I I do think that's an option. If I might offer something. Uh couple of couple ideas, couple thoughts. The real action today is to do the public hearing. Um and I think we're going to get a lot of good stuff that will come out of that. No rates are set. No, we proposed this, but we'll go there. We'll go none of that will be today. That's what would happen in August. John, go to one of them where you put that. But August isn't that far away. I guess that's correct. It's not. Trust me. Go to one of your charts that have those smoothed out averages. And council, this this presentation with all this will be in y'all's inbox by the end of the the day. Keep go. The ones got the bar chart going. Okay. Thank you. And I I struggle with with colors that are similar. The dark blue is where you stand today. The yellow is where the recommendation came into you. In between those two, and it you can look at the left or the right chart, it really doesn't doesn't change. um the odd color of blue whatever that is that's got the big text love 2025 current and seak averaged that's where John's just just as a point of illustration if you took where you stand today where strictly the mathematics take you tomorrow that's where you would land. So, it's just it's a point for discussion that we would continue between now and the next hearing at the at the second July meeting and then certainly if all that comes together and we've got clarity, then we go to August. August is where the actions would be. If there ends up being no clarity, mayor, to go back to your original question, yes, you can stay where you are today, which would be that dark blue bar. And then at some point in the future, some sometime between then and the five years because you're going to have to do it in five, you would do this study and the process back over again. Does that make any sense? Yes. But using that purple, I'm going to call it purple. My wife says I'm color blind. the current and seak average that would involve setting a rate different than the 25% or the half of the half, right? We would have to set a lower rate to get to that average. It would involve setting a different rate than the 2022 because the other one's just a recommendation. Sir, what I'm saying it would it wouldn't be maintaining the 25 or the half of the half that we have at the moment. We would reduce that to get on my on my previous slide, sir. It actually uh tells you the percent range is 18 to 21% of the max if you take the average. All right. Very good. So, yes, it is a different multiplier. All right. Any other questions, Mr. Collins? So, to be clear uh from from all of our staff, what we're doing today is we've we having a public hearing. Of course, we'll have public comments in a moment, I assume. Uh, but the action item on our agenda is to accept the report and the information provided, which would then give us a starting point if we choose as a council to dig into all the detail. That's our starting point. Yes. Yes, sir. That's correct. Yes. We we have to have this base study. So that uh six or 7.3 it's receiving that study. So we have it now somewhere between here and there is all available. All right. I think we're done here. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. All right. I will now open the public hearing for uh agenda item 7.3 at uh 401 p.m. And is there anyone here today wishing to speak in favor of this item or actually speak on the item at all? Good afternoon, Mayor Council. My name is Chris Barry, 43036. Um, I did want to take a couple moments to clarify a couple points that John had mentioned on the TIA and Amarillo. We did one of those, but the city had already some funds uh for one of the roadways. So, we didn't actually have to do anything in that scenario. Um, I have seen some of the agreements that did require developers to pay part of roads in Amarillo. So, some of what he said was true. It's just beat wasn't involved in those ones where developers did have to pave the road. And as far as uh Milan Odessa, it's part of the ordinance that the developer pays for twothird and the city reimbures for a third and then that third that the developers on the hook for were allowable for impact fee credits. So I just want to make a couple of those clarifying points. Um and as a chair of the seat committee, I just want to take a moment to thank staff and Kimley Horn for all their hard work. Um and the SEAK committee as well. We put a lot of time and conversation. Um, I wish y'all guys could have been part of that. We had a lot of good discussion. I think would have helped give you some insight on the questions you're asking today, which are very good. And, um, I hope we can come to a resolution between now and August on keeping these impact fees. Um, whether our recommendation or somewhere in between what we're doing today, um, I think our goal is really we want to see what's best for the city. Um, you know, sometimes we had to take our developer hat on and put our city hat on and think of it holistically and what's best for the city and I felt like we did that pretty well. Uh, we had a lot of competing opinions. We had a lot of opinions, myself included. Um, but we worked really hard to come up with what we thought was the right thing for the city and uh, the homebuilders came in and they gave their opinion and we talked through a lot of things uh, independently outside that meeting. So, I feel like we have a lot of good input. Um, we may off on where we are landing from some of the the developers and the builders and what that looks like for them. But I just encourage you guys uh let us know what we can do to help bridge any gap. Um but hopefully we can get across that road in in August. So I appreciate the time. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to thank that committee because of it. It had to be a lot to to um work out. But thank you, Chris, and and your committee. I don't know if any of the others are here, but if you are, thank you so much for your time because it's a lot to take in and I think we all want to do what's best for the city. So, we appreciate you. All right. Anyone else here today to speak on this item? Council Thomas Payne. I live at 15309 FM 1730. Um, I'm going to be very succinct today. I don't promise I will be the next time I get in front of you about this subject, but I did want to stand up and try to bring some clarity to a couple of things. It's easy to get lost in the attempt to do the math. uh the council hired experts to do the math and they have done the math and that's what you see presented before you. So, in terms of getting lost in the mathematics, um, conversations with the expert that the council hired to do the math would be the best way if you want to try to really dig into the details of of the math itself. But suffice to say, uh, Kimley Horn has done this all over the state many times. And so they didn't start from scratch in this process. I want to try to leave you with just a couple of really simple things. Impact fees originally were created as an attempt to more fairly distribute the cost of new development. Period. Who was paying for it before impact fees? All of the citizens. So all of the citizens were equally bearing all of the cost of new development. Impact fees were created to more fairly distribute that cost. Not to put it entirely on new development, but to more fairly distribute that cost to new development. This is a zero someum game. Somebody is paying for the cost. If the city builds a street and there are no impact fees, then all of the citizens in the city and all of the districts of the city are equally sharing the cost of the construction of that new street. And I'll just add a new street that some of those constituencies may never even see. they may never even see it, much less drive on it. So the concept is just to more evenly distribute the cost. In our first iteration, the committee recommended uh certain structure of impact fees to the city and that was a basically a 5050 split trying to put it in the perspective that we're talking about it from the council at that time. and I'm going to use not my words but the words of others watered that recommendation down and cut it essentially the way they put is they cut it in half. So they took the half that was supposed to be 50 on the I'm going to call it the private side from whom the fees are collected and they cut that in half to 25 but it's a zero sum game. The 25 went to the other side. So now instead of a 50/50 split, it became a 7525 split. So instead of a oneto one split, it went to a 3:1 match. That's actually not cutting it in half. It's it's causing a much greater impact distribution than that. And so the point I would want to make is is this is a zero sum game. any amount that you take away from impact fees, you are putting on all of the citizens of Texas. And so it this isn't a lot of the things that are being talked about in my opinion are they're down in the weeds that aren't really what matters here. The current recommendation from the committee keeps the current structure that we're calling 7525 in place and simply applies that structure to the new numbers that are provided by the experts that were hired to come up with the current numbers. So what was the reason for the restudy? It's because the numbers have changed. The cost of constructing streets is dramatically higher today than it was five years ago. So all things being equal, the numbers would be more just because of that cost. In addition, the distribution of development in the city is changing. There's more development occurring in some areas than there were five years ago, really six years ago. uh and less in others relative to each other. And so again, the effort here is toward fairness, fairness between the distinction between the cost of impact fees in different service areas and fairness in the distribution of the cost of new construction for new development in the city of Luk. And so the simple way I'd give you to think about this is anything you vote to reduce the recommended structure from the committee is a vote toward unfairness to the citizens in general who are not in the developing area. And if you think about it that way, I think it gives you a little clearer perspective on what you're entertaining when you talk about decreasing impact fees or leaving them like they are. If you leave them like they are, then you are unfairly leaving the cost of new development disproportionately, even more so, on the non-developing parts of the city. So, I'll just give you that to think about. One other thing, and this is just an example, but you have a lot of constituencies who are always arguing against impact fees and against raising impact fees. And I think it would be beneficial to step back and look at the fact that a lot of those same constituencies who would argue against impact fees are buying lots to build in the 2026 parade of homes at the Red Feather Development which could not exist in 2026 without impact fees. Impact fees are the reason and the only reason that Quaker Avenue is built. Otherwise, without impact fees, it would still be a dirt road today. There would be insufficient access to the lots in the Red Feather development. The fire marshall would not allow that. So, it wouldn't be in the parade of homes. So, the same people that are arguing against impact fees are benefiting from the fact that they exist because those lots in the 20 26 parade would not exist without impact fees. And when I say it's the only reason, I mean the sole reason that Quaker Avenue is being built is because impact fees exist. Without them, it would still be a dirt road and we don't know no telling for how long. And and there are many other examples of how impact fees have enabled the construction of bond projects. And that is the whole point here. As the city engineer, current one and previous one said to the impact fee committee many times in presentations, the point of impact fees is to get streets built. That's a quote. They've said it over and over again, and I'll say it. That is the point of impact fees when you only have them for streets, to get streets built. And so with impact fees, we have the potential for developers to do development agreements, to get credits for the impact fees, to build streets. Quaker Avenue is the current prime example that would not exist without impact fees and therefore the credits developers can get for spending their money. So just to give you a perspective, Quaker Avenue is approximately a $4.2 million project in its current erration. The city is going to spend approximately a,200,000 toward the construction of that $4.2 million project. And if I'm not mistaken, and Mr. City Manager will correct me if I am, but I believe the city's part of that is now being paid out of impact fees. He's telling me I'm correct, and I thought I was. So, think about that for a minute. You have a $4.2 2 million roadway that is being built from private contribution and city impact fees that would otherwise not be built. So when you entertain this, take whatever time you need to to find out whatever information you need to understand this well enough to act on it. Please before you act and particularly act to decrease the impact fees again like was done the first time. Our impact fee structure is not sufficient to keep up with our street construction needs as recommended. Just as the first time when it was cut from 50/50 to 7525 we weren't going to have enough money. The same constituencies who argued vehemently originally for no impact fees or lower impact fees are now going to stand before you and complain that we haven't collected more impact fee money. The same exact people who caused the decrease in the structure and caused the lesser collection of impact fees are now going to stand in front of you and complain that we haven't collected more money in impact fees. Hopefully, I've helped. It's my intention to help. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Anyone else wants to speak uh to this agenda item? Good afternoon. I'm Jordan Wheatley. Uh 3917 114th Street here in Love. Wow. Uh I represent the impact fee task force today. West Texas Homebuilder Association, Love Association of Realtors, Love Apartment Association, Chamber of Commerce, grand total 4,800 member businesses here in Lok. I want to start out first before I say anything by just saying I have a tremendous amount of respect for everybody in this room. I really do. This council, our city manager, the staff. I feel like right now we have the very best staff in engineering planning and development that we've ever had. I really do honestly believe that I can make a call today and get an answer back like that on something that's extremely complicated and they return your call. With that said, I cannot believe how much time and money we have spent on this program. I can't believe it. I'm brainggled by this. We have spent six years on this. Well over a hundred meetings, probably another hundred outside of council on this. And we have spent $5 million with this program. And we have 14 to show for it, but we spent five million. We rounded down our last bond, 5 million that passed for optics so it would look better. We saved $5 million last city council to try to make our sales tax deal work. We We saved $5 million in one meeting. I I I just I don't get it. This group is close has closely been monitoring this this process from the very beginning and we believe it's time to turn the light out on this program quite simply because we have the greatest minds in all of Lok in this room right now and we are completely focusing on the wrong things. We're completely off task. The elephant in the room right now is that we passed a bond in 2009 and then we had a gap between 2009 in 2022 when that next one passed. That's the that's the problem. We cannot do that ever again. If you look at this from a 16-year altitude and really just step back from all this brilliant math and look back, that's what happened. We had a huge gap. But this these people and these groups that I that we're representing today, 4,800 member businesses, we saw that gap and we rallied together in 2022 and 2024 took the calls from then mayor at the time and this mayor now, Mr. McReer, hey, we need some help to get some bonds passed. We busted our tails to educate and raise funds and promote the city of Leic that how far we were behind on roads and they passed. We have $34 million in the last two years raised as a result, dwarfing this $5 million that we've raised and spent or that we've spent in the last six years on this program. Not to mention how much we spent on consultants to raise $14 million. I We're off task altogether. I think that the solution going forward, and I've spoke with a lot of you one-on-one, is we have got to get serious about future road bond planning right now. You guys all have the the ability right now to put a stake in the ground and say, "We're going to get serious about road bond planning. We're going to get serious about this. We're going to quit looking at math of $5 million and all the other myths that have come up as a result of trying to justify a broken impact fee program. We're going to quit it. I think it's time to set this pro this program and these fees at zero and move on and get serious. We need one representative from each district to represent and be on a roadway planning committee. And let's get serious about this. Use our minds that we have here. Use our local consultants that are here. Some of them are here today that work for free for us almost every day on behalf of the city. Let's tap into that. I was going to save all this for the next hearing, but I just I couldn't get past hearing a lot about this stuff today, so I had to jump up. But we urge you guys to deny this report. I asked you six months ago to deny it and not spend 150,000 on it or whatever was spent on it that gave you a bunch of calculus 3 that is just to me worthless. Our bond packs rallied together and we had three meetings. Each bond got this thing done with very little expense with consultants and hearings and notices and posts and arguments and news and social media. It was just a very simple thing that we all came together and got it done. Growth does pay for growth. I don't know who thinks it doesn't. As far as the West Texas Homebuilder Association, we've had 75 years of prey to homes. We were going to have a prey to homes with or without this impact fee program, and we're going to continue having prey to homes without impact fees. We had three other choices for that particular site that previous gentleman's talking about. As as far as developer agreements, we've been doing developer agreements since the beginning of time. Look at Milwaukee. Milwaukee was done and rallied together in the same manner with local developers. And look at the tax base that Milwaukee has now. There was no impact fees used on Milwaukee. I can do a developer agreement right now with the city and I don't care about impact fee credits. I don't care about them. I don't go buy property hoping that I'll get an impact fee credit. I don't care anything about them. I appreciate you guys time. U I'll be back at the next hearing. I don't know what else I can say. I appreciate y'all. Thank y'all. Mayor, members of council, I'm Victoria Whitehead and I uh live in District 6, 4514 11th Street. Um, also just kind of want to reiterate some of what Jordan said, uh, but will not repeat. Uh we've had 75 years of the prey to homes and the fact that that road um was potentially not done did not stop us from choosing to say let's build houses. Let's create an event in our community that's going to cause buzz and stir and excitement um for new homeowners and help small businesses here in town builders sell homes to help our community. We have a housing shortage. So, we're not sitting here um picking parades based on roads. And I really hope you um take it to our heart and to and take that to your heart. 75 years of the parade of homes. Um this past month we welcomed 16,000 adults through three gates um celebrating our local economy, celebrating what it means to build homes here in West Texas. And I just I was also going to kind of save this for next time, but I think it's super relevant to sit here. Um the last couple of times we've talked about new growth. We've heard public comments, new growth doesn't pay for new growth. Um, homebuilders did a study. Um, I've got 75 pages of calculus three style math. Um, that looked at one square mile of Milwaukee to Frankfurt 64 to like 96. Um, and what we did was we wanted to get the real data because we wanted to an answer as a board and as an association, what does it really mean to develop Levik and what does it mean to have multifamily and single family and commercial? Um this example here, that exact development in our community in 2003 produced 1312 single family homes, 712 multifamily units, 100 or $433 million in one-time local income, 63.7 million in annual recurring income, 5,888 local jobs, 14,05 jobs supported permanently after occupancy. Local jurisdictions benefit from 63.3 million are local like here, not state, love county, city of Leach, water district, etc. 63.3 million in one-time revenue from taxes, fees, and charges. In addition to that, 35.3 million in annual recurring revenue from property taxes, utilities, hospital charges, and more. This is one square mile off of Milwaukee. Imagine what 114th and Quaker is doing. Imagine what 114th and Slide is doing. You know, we sit there and I think for me, um, I started with the SEAK process, uh, seven, eight years ago. I was heavily pregnant during the process and had my baby. I cannot tell you how much of a frustration it is as a young leader in this community to see people continue to argue about equity for new love, old love, new growth, old growth. I live at 10th and Quaker. I love my neighborhood. I am invested there. But I also work for the homebuilders association and I see the value of the partnership that has to be at play as someone who lives in the middle of town to those who are developing and building outside of town. Um I hate the division that gets created in the discussions of equity. I mean, we could sit here and pull property tax records and say this district produces x amount of property taxes and this does this and I mean these sales taxes, what if we did sales taxes like impact fees? What if we let sales taxes from South Leach not go to North Leach? That's creating a divisive Leach. That's not the community that we're here to support and grow. Um, as someone who again, I'm invested in this community. My husband and I choose to live here. I sincerely ask that you consider what Jordan's talking about, what our associ association is talking about. Create the lift committee, create the road bond or I, you know, it's actually a future infrastructure committee because we also have water and wastewater we got to solve, right? Um, but help us, especially those who are choosing to live here, say, let's like now look at the plan. Let's create a plan. Let's stop going council by council to say this works now. This works now. this works. Now, let's create a plan. Like, I've come from the water world. We have a 50-year watery year plan. You guys took some historical moves with Governor Abbott signing a bill the other day. Why can't we do that for roads? Why can't we take the time that we're doing and put it towards something greater? Um, so I ask your consideration. Let's pause the program. We're spending a lot of dollars on it. Let's pause the program. Let's look for solutions that give us the best return on investment and let's continue to work together for a greater united love community. Anyone else wishing to speak on item 7.3? If not, I'll close this uh public hearing at 4:30. We'll now take up item 7.3.1 on our agenda. Uh this is a associated with the public hearing. Uh and this would be a motion to approve item uh agenda item 7.31, which is a resolution considering that uh uh resolution is a resolution receiving the land use assumptions. capital improvement plans and capital improvements advisory committee recommendations associated with the 2025 impact fee restudy. So is there a motion to accept u this uh recommendation? Is there a second? It's a motion and a second. Any discussion? Mr. Gene, thank you. I have a few things to say about this. Uh first I'll note that our agenda item is to receive uh this report. It's not our vote is not an endorsement or approval of the contents of the report and and it doesn't commit us to any particular course of action today. This is a report that's required by state law and so it has to be done. And I want to say thank you to our outstanding staff, consultants, and everyone who's volunteered their time to serve on the capital improvement advisory committee as well. So, thank you for helping us meet this state requirement. This report though is just one of many different ways that we can evaluate and implement land use assumptions. I think the decision is not as simple as just doing the math. If it's ultimately a legislative decision, we don't need to substitute the judgment of this council for outside engineers or national traffic studies. And I think we've seen with our questions today that there's a risk of relying on mathematical formulas can create some unfair and and even nonsensical outcomes like in the in the different treatment between coffee shops. Ultimately, this council has to set the policy for uh what we believe is the best interest of our growing city. Now, as a bit of history, when when the council, previous council first implemented impact fees, there was some discussion that it might be a a really meaningful alternative to road bonds. But after several years, we've seen that impact fees have never raised enough money to fund the city's annual construction plans. Local developers have been successful in building roadways like Milwaukee that have uh contributed tremendously to the city, but really major roadway projects typically required uh bond elections for the city to raise the necessary capital for our contribution to it. Elections are a fair way to raise money and and ultimately to raise property taxes because it's the voters deciding. The bonds also have the advantage that they are both they're based on real projects that have been bid with real numbers. They're not theories or assumptions or possible ideas about how people might visit different land uses. We've also seen that voters have have approved and disapproved bond proposals in the past, which gives me a lot of confidence about using that as a method. So, if the impact fees have not been a significant way to fund our projects, what has the effect been in the last few years? We think what we've seen from impact fees is that they've had a strong anti-growth effect. And in retrospect, perhaps this isn't surprising because other cities have deliberately implemented impact fees for the goal of reducing or trying to stop city growth. And some of the strongest advocates of anti-growth, anti- capitalist policies are big fans of impact fees. Now, that's not at all to characterize all advocates for impact fees, but um I think that there's a real recognition in some circles that they are a tool for anti-growth and anti-development. This particular land use assumption would would in effect almost double the impact fees that are paid by new and and growing businesses here in Levik. And like Councilman Collins said, Leach is a small business town. Uh I think it's very important to all of us that we keep that small businessfriendly character in our community. Since the council started considering these proposals, I have heard from many small and local businesses that are already struggling under the current impact scheme uh impact fee scheme. We've we've seen projects that small businesses can't afford to pay for now with the current impact fees and I'm afraid of what the consequences would be if we double those. I'm afraid that it could bring growth to a real standstill. And that's a problem because the city of Levik depends on the growth of property tax and sales tax that's brought by new homes and new businesses. Um I would I would respectfully disagree with the idea that growth is a zero sum game. I think it would be more appropriate to say that uh the rising tide raises all boats because we have for over a century enjoyed steady sustained growth in our community without the use of impact fees. Now, unfortunately, in the last few months, we've seen that start to slow down with slowing and declining uh sales tax revenue, for example. So when it comes time for this this council to set impact fees, I would encourage everyone to join me in in putting LEC back on track for policy that enables another century of steady sustained growth. Thank you, Mr. Christine. Anyone else? All right, I see no one else wishing to further discussion. So we'll now take the vote on this is again just receiving this report. Uh so all in favor of receiving the report let it be known by saying I. I. Any opposed to receiving the report say nay. I hear none. The motion carries unanimously. All right. Having exhausted all items on our agenda, this meeting is now ajourned. Thank you very much everyone for attending. [Music]