Let's call the meeting to order. City of Laro special council meeting council chambers 1110 Houston Street, Laredo, Texas, Tuesday, October the 1st, 2024. All right. for the pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Moment of silence, please. Thank you. May be seated. >> Mr. Secretary, roll call, please. >> Honorable mayor, Dr. Victor D. Travinho, >> present. Council member District 1, Gilbert Gonzalez. Council member District 2, Ricardo Ranel Jr. >> present. >> Council member District 3, Melissa Cigaroa. Council member District 4, Albert Torres Jr. >> here. Mayor for Temp Ruben Gutierrez Jr. >> Council Member District 6 Dr. Tyler King >> here. >> Council member District 7, Vanessa Perez. >> Council member District 8, Alisa Sigoa. >> Mayor, you have a quum. >> Thank you. We'll proceed with item number four. Number citizens comments. We have one citizen comment. Ro Ginzas. >> Thank you. May I approve? >> Yeah, approve, please. >> Good afternoon. >> My name is Roz and I'm at 2418 O'Neal, Texas. I finally saw in front of the 2200 blocks, you know, they they clean the area. I was wondering why. Now I'm told that you're all going to put plants in the middle of the medium instead of making it in Clark, it's going to be worse. The traffic is horrible. Make it completely a turning left lane going each way and you make it safer for everybody. I think it's it's it's a bad choice to put the plants there. You know, we wasted instead of wasting money there, beautify some of the place, but make parking into a safer place. I went to the lake, Texas, and they have big turning lanes and the the center part, the cement they They paint them yellow so you can see them better better at night. We'll avoid having more lights out there. Put you want to put one in the middle in the middle of the street. Make a completely turning left both ways. You know the traffic will flow a lot better for everybody, you know, make it safer for everybody. But the plants was going to take care of them. Then site that used to take care of theirs. They quit and it became a disaster until you all finally not not you but the finally somebody went the sidewalks are you know working beautify the better for the better part I think it's going to be worse what you all >> what intersection is this >> this is a district 4 on Clark uh I saw that like right in front of Ryan when first I saw what they did in the 2000 block of Clark Street that They, you know, they cleaned it up and I was like, "Wow, it's about time." I don't know how many years I've been there. And finally cleaned it, but then I started seeing it. They were taking breaks off. Five plants on each block. Who's going to maintain them? That's irrevalent. It's just the idea. Instead of making them safer and better, it's going to be worse. It's just like when you added those fake plants, they had to take them off the cactuses because it became dangerous. Then you put a urine heights area. That's the only place that has a sign that says you're in a height. Nobody else knows where we're at. I'm going to get about that part. We all know where. [laughter] But in reality, you know, I think it's a waste of money. You know, beautify Laro by doing it safer and the traffic safer. I don't want to say anything about Saunders because I don't want you all to go put plants in the middle of Saunders to make it worse. Thank you for letting me talk. You have a beautiful day. God bless you all. Thank you for your comment. Do we have any other comments? Public comment. >> All right. All right. Let's proceed to item number five, staff report. Number one, discussion and action to cancel or reschedule the regularly scheduled October 7th meeting 2024 council meeting to focus on voter outreach efforts. Now, I made this motion so we can discuss. The reason I wanted to bring it up is because we have started our get to vote campaign and we're seeing that there's a great amount of apathy in the community, especially among registered voters. And as your mayor, I'm asking the public for their support. And as a leader of this local government, I'm asking for the city council and the city to support me and changing our trajectory of low voter turnout. I do want to thank council member Ricardo for accompanying me and district 1 because the people clearly appreciated our visit to their home even though many of the people that we visited were coming home late because of work or two jobs. uh and to take public transportation home. That's also a reason why then onetoone time was appreciated, but we need to do more and we're going to need help and outreach. As we currently are seeing, Laredo has four decades of averaging only 36% of voter turnout and this is not functional. I believe that our job and our task of the city council in this election cycle these next 20 days should be talking to our constituents to go out to vote rather than constantly bickering and gaslighting each other here at council because the end result irrespective of if you're a Democrat or Republican is that we need to get these numbers up and no one is going to listen to us or give us funding that we need and basically I'm really tired of saying that we're the number one port and carrying the commercial weight for the rest of the community in our streets and congestion. But no one is going to listen to us because we don't we have a such low voter turnout. And some of these dates we should take into consideration. Also, we have early voting on the on October 21st and there will be a press conference with some expansion of the items on on the 23rd in addition to the block walking events in the next two weeks. Additionally, we're starting to see the new fiscal year we have passed so many resolutions on workshops and town hall, but we do not have [snorts] scheduled our water and public works workshops and the Tomas statue workshop and town hall and the B national committee public engagement. So that would be my motion to cancel the October 7th meeting so that we can get out into our respective district and talk to the people. And I have second motion. You want to vote on this first? >> Second. All in favor? >> Discussion. >> Any discussion? Go ahead. meeting completely, mayor. Could we not reschedu it for the following day? >> That is a question. Any other discussion on this? >> Mayor. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Thank you. And appreciate all the work you've been doing out in the community social media post and um it is a tragedy that we have such a low voter turnout in Laredo for sure. And I think it's good we're teaming up with u some of the nonprofits and partners to help improve that. But obviously, like you said, it's been uh decades in the making and it's probably going to take uh quite a while to, you know, and and and for the people to see a change and and you mentioned uh you know, the the fighting and and things on and that definitely doesn't help. Um but I guess um you know, obviously I just learned about this when everybody else did that. you know, this special meeting was coming up and um I guess for me um I think you know the election shouldn't and my you know my my initial reaction I'm just going to give my initial reaction is that that elections shouldn't um you know stop us from doing our our regular um you know city business. I think we should probably be finding ways to make our meetings more productive. Um I agree with that 100%. Um but I don't necessarily see um you know cancelling the meeting is solving that core problem. I think we have a core problem. We there are there is some dysfunction on this council. 100% agree. Uh I just don't think cancelling the meeting is necessarily going to solve that for the next meeting and for the next months. But I I'll support uh you know you on this if that's what everyone else agrees on. But just just my initial reaction. >> Thank you. Yeah. So, I think we've u I'm split here, right, as to what what we're going to do, but um for starters, I think we should just take both items together. Um was going to be a suggestion before the motion was made, but there is a motion on the floor. Um we've canled meetings before. Uh it wouldn't be unusual um whenever we've had conflicts, especially in the summer. So, we we've done this in the past. um in the eight years or going on eight years I've been here. It's not unusual for us to do this. We have rescheduled numerous amount of times and we've canled um numerous amount of times as well. I do want to however make sure and here Mr. Mary if you allow me to address our city manager and um our city attorney as to the legality of the potential cancellation of one of the two meetings because I think that's um what it seems like we're voting on. um and uh if there's any potential conflicts with either the policy and procedures manual or the charter and I would want for us to be enlightened on that information if possible. >> Mayor, the charter 2.07 I believe requires at least one meeting per month. That's what required. >> May I redirect? >> Yes. So, if we were to cancel the October 7th meeting, which is what I'm assuming the mayor is um trying to accomplish here, as long as we meet again within the month, we'd comply with charter um mandates right? >> Yes. Correct. >> So, mayor, if we were to cancel the seventh meeting, then we have an item also that talks about a potential cancellation or rescheduling of the 21st. I'm assuming we're cancelling the 7th if that's the motion that passes. Moving to number two, we look at reschedule the 21st or we're looking at canceling one or the other. And if we were to reschedule the 21st, I want to know what that new rescheduling date would be so we can make sure that we're available for the conduction of city business. >> Yes. And the second motion talks about that. The second motion would be to reschedule the October 21st meeting with falls in the first day of early voting and reschedule it to October the 28th, a week later. >> That makes sense. Okay. So, I guess we can vote on the first motion of that. >> First motion. >> One more quick question, please. Go ahead. >> Um with before we go would, you know, because uh the month of September had five Mondays. So, we're going, you know, two two me weeks already without a Monday and going all the way to October. That would um you know, push it one, two, three, four, five weeks without a meeting. I just I want to make sure there's nothing from city management side of things that you know going that long over a month without a meeting. Um if that would be problematic. Um so I believe management just you know learned about this as well when it came. this five weeks is, you know, >> you know, mayor, I uh there's only one item that I that I'm aware of that will cause uh any of the the impact to it is that the city has to appoint somebody um to the appraisal district uh by October 25th at the latest >> resolution, but I I believe that that we could do a workound for ratification. >> All right. May I be addressing? >> Yes, go ahead. >> So, I'm uh legally on the board right until the end of my term. So, I do not plan on resigning or stepping down until the end of my term. So, that resolution or vote I think would conflict with my current appointment. >> I'm sorry. >> I said I'm legally part of the uh appraisal district board up to December 31st. >> Right. Um with the new ordinance that passed. So, I wouldn't resign. I think my resignation would be what would trigger the actual vote that's needed to become effective January the 1st. So, I don't plan on resigning until then. >> No, I of course not. Council member, uh, it's just some deconlicting with the appraisal district. I believe that with the new law, they're concerned about having someone appointed or on the ballot for the the next term. and we just don't want to uh lose our >> someone appointed or on the ballot for the entities to vote on >> and then we do have three or four members on the council that are on the ballot that I wouldn't want to be not considered for that because we can't assume that they're not coming back, right? So to make it fair, I'd assume that we won't adopt a resolution until November the 6. >> Mayor, I believe Miss Maldonado can uh provide just a little more background with it as well. >> All right, go ahead. tax department. Um u just to answer your question, mayor and council uh members, um the resolution um to um uh to select a candidate, it's for next year starting January 1st of 2025. >> So, Counciloman Torres, you should be able to complete your term through December 31st. That should be no problem. However, we do need to select the candidate. Um the Actually, the deadline was October 15th. I spoke to the chief appraiser, Mr. uh Bobby Pericy, and uh he said um we he can extend it, but the latest would be October 25th, and this needs to go through a resolution. So, we do need to submit the our candidates by October 25th. >> We should have included it to this meeting today. >> Um all right, then. I guess we can have a special meeting at noon or something to just take care of that one matter. Thank you for the clarification. >> We can discuss that later. We can get >> Okay. >> All right. Any other discussion? >> All right. Call for the question. All in favor? >> I opposed. >> Motion pass. >> Mr. For item number two, I'll make a motion to schedule our October meeting for October the 28th at 5:00 p.m. >> Motion >> 5 p.m. for recognitions if needed and 5:30 for uh the meeting to commence for regular session. >> All right. Motion [clears throat] second. >> All in favor? >> I opposed. Motion pass. Thank you. >> Motion to Mr. M. >> Motion second. All in favor? >> I opposed. Motion pass. Meeting a journ.