Mayor Paul Gohman called the Regular City Council meeting to order at 5:30 p.m. May 16, 2024, and a quorum was established. In attendance were Mayor Paul Gohman, Clabe F.V Webb, Mike Bailey, RA Morris, David Scott, Ricky Royall, Teresa Ballard, and Tara Mayor Paul Gohman led with the pledge of allegiance and council member Mike  Robinson. Zach Davidson was absent from the meeting.  Bailey led the prayer. There were no public comments: Opened with the April Monthly Reports Fire Department Report  There were sixteen volunteers signing the roster. Eleven attended the first of the month meeting and eleven attended training on the 4th Monday of the month. There were two runs for the month of April with four volunteers on one run and six volunteers on the other  run.  Economic Development Report  4B board met on May 13th and approved a loan grant for new business inventory and equipment to Shane Bearden or Bearden Automotive & Repairs ini the about of$ $8,509.30. A public hearing has been scheduled for May 17, 2024, at 8:15am and then a special meeting to award the money. Bralyn Barker applied for the loan/grant but there was no  action at this time.  Cemetery Committee Report  Fulmer came out and resprayed the cemetery on May 14, 2024. David Scott confirmed that there is no committee.  Depot Report point. Animal Report Trapper Report is as follows: 2-Traps Set for Cats  Still waiting to hear from the historical commission toi tell us what our choices we can have on the roof. Manuel of Menjivar roofing would like to bid on the job when we get to that  1-Loose Dog, trapped in house. Removed dog and returned it to owner. 3-cats trapped, two domestic = They were released, one sick euthanized.  Tags were placed on all traps stating they belong to the City of Bronte, with verbiage  "unlawful to remove or tamper with. Ordinance/Municipal Report  Ordinance official Lopez was notified of two neighbors dogs getting into a fight, one neighbor locked dog up till trapper could come and release back to owner. He contacted the resident that wanted to pursue legal action and explained that it had nothing to do  with the city, it would be a civil matter between neighbors. Contact was made with the resident regarding grass must be cut.  1    Contact was made with resident must register dogs, now have three dogs registered and Contact was made withi the resident to make sure the trailer is not hooked to water sewer, Contact was made with the resident regarding doors and windows not being covered on property Mobile home, helped residents with taking care of boarding up house. There were no warnings or citations issued for the municipal court.  one fowl.  and one was moved from property.  Permit Report - April 1-Fence, 1-Awning & 1-Pavilion.  Fifty-one permit requests have been handed in to Livestock and Fowl. 2- livestock were denied but (corrected issues and now approved)  21- livestock approved, twenty-four fowl approved 1-F Fowl rejected and is in the appeal process 3F FFA/4H permits issued approved.  Regular Agenda  Permits: Consider Appeal Fowl Permit - Tiffany Harendt  Ricky Royall explained the process toi the city council. According to the way our ordinance reads you have to be residing at the place where your fowl are present and at this time Tiffany Harendt explained their circumstances that led to them living elsewhere. I have kept city hall staff up to date on everything that has happened, and not once did they say this was a problem until now. The owner does not want fowl on his property where weare Mayor asks any discussion from council. RA Morris said we set the ordinances for a reason, and we need to stick to how the ordinance reads. Mike Bailey reported that recently we have been advised and had to amend ordinances because we were giving variances at some places and some places not. Mayor Gohman added by giving out variances it compromises the integrity of the document of the ordinance. Invalidates the Tiffany Harendt expressed the people that wrote these ordinances most oft the ordinances Mike Bailey iterated the ordinances are on record as being the statutes in this town, all of them were recently reevaluated by this Council because we were making variances to people and that was putting the city in al bad situation. They are in place for a reason. The Mike Bailey made the motion to deny the variance as mentioned in this discussion and because oft the advice that we get from out legal counsel on these matters, solmake the motion not to give the variance, Tiffany Harendt interrupted Mike Bailey and asked what advice does the legal counsel give you about City Council members coming to my place of employment and harassing me about this situation? Mike Bailey commented I do not know anything about that. Mayor Gohman replied it is not really germane to this. Ihave a  they are not residing at the property.  residing.  ordinance.  that are written, the people are not on City Council anymore.  ordinances are in place for the safety ofi the citizens of Bronte.  2    motion on the floor do Ihave a second, RAI Morris seconded the motion. Vote:4/0 motion carried. The ordinance does not specify a time frame to comply. Ms. Harendt will have a Finance: Council member Clabe F. Webb request discussion appointing Bronte Fire Department Administrator approx. consider $40,000 annual salary for a 2-3 yr. window. Mayor Gohman asked BVFD Chief Kolby Lee to address the issues they are facing. Mr. Lee addressed the council, do not worry about the number. Mr. Webb asked, and I just threw a number out there. The bottom line comes down to no one having time to do the administrative function. We all have other jobs and are busy. I am on my way out. I do not have time to be a full-fledged member doing every little thing. I do not want to just go up and leave or maybe step down to just maybe make a few calls and leave you know somebody come in that really does not know what's going on because then we're just going backwards. Italked toi the city ladies about this for a while and maybe see what you all think. The department is getting smaller and there are not a whole lot of people just Mayor Gohman integrated knowing the reporting has been an issue quite a while. As far as the city is doing something about it, you are a 501C3. You are an autonomous unit, sO you are not really under the city, however, we do have an interlocal agreement with you and sO we could model it would require a modification of the Interlocal agreement and we David Scott asked what do you have to report? Kolby Lee answered we are supposed to be reporting to the state on every run we make, it is called NFIRS. You enter every run you make. It is a pain; the system is always down. It is a process and then we got the TML reports, which are not terrible, it is just doing them. I usually get them in about a month after I am supposed to. I will do the report while we are having our fire meeting and finish after the meeting and get it to city hall. Then there is Fire Connect that you Mike Bailey asked how many hours are spent on reports each month? Kolby Lee said approximately 6 hrs. Mike mentioned that there was $600 ini the budget for the EMS, and Mayor Gohman thinks at budget time we can solve this problem very easily. It is not an expensive thing. It is just a few hours a month we can do that. We are going to have to modify the interlocal agreement to accommodate that. That is the only thing we need to Mike Bailey looks like what I am hearing is perhaps even any effect of doing something like this might lower interest insurance rates or a grant might even offset the expense to Kolby Lee ify you have SOP that might make your score go lower but one of the important things is that we lose a lot of points on the ISO score is the age of our trucks. We lost fifty points just because we do not have a ladder truck. Isaid, "Well, what do we need al ladder truck for, and he said, well, it is worth fifty points. Over the last four or five years, or even longer, we have everyone has damn near brand new bunker gear. We have gotten  reasonable time to either move or get rid of the fowl.  not beating down the doors to sign on.  could and hire someone part time just to do the reporting.  must log in every now and then.  itcould be or some of it could be reallocated to help with the cost.  do. Ido not see it as a big issue financially or logistically.  help pay for somebody to do this job.  3    $30,000 worth of SBA brand new; I mean through good Forestry Service equipment grants, which those are easy to get and you fill out one, but we are maxed out on equipment. We need to have new trucks. The newest truck is a 2006. We have six trucks; two brush pumpers, booster and rescue and the other the pump went out, sO we have Mayor Gohman, we understand the issues and we will take it under advisement. This is this is not an act, this is. A. Discussion. We have what we want, unless there's another Discuss - Finance: Council member Clabe F. Webb request discussion regarding  spare tires on it.  question. Thanks for coming and we appreciate all that you do for us.  Capital Improvement charge on utility billing.  Mayor Gohman turned the floor to council member Clabe F. Webb.  Mr. Webb spoke to the council regarding the Capital Improvement charge on utility billing. l'am just thinking about this, but it seems like that with the Capital Improvement fund that we have on our utility bill, it is only $5.00 a month. I understand it goes to capital improvements. However, now we: are making more money, or we are getting more money from other investments and at this time,! lam speaking specifically about the interest that we're earning from the CD's. at Keystone Bank we are making about $800 or more a month for each of the CD's. The $5 that we're making from the Capital Improvement Fund on utility is only around fifteen to sixteen hundred a month. It seems like that with the difficulty that many of our folks living here in Bronte have we could help our citizens. It would be to give them a little bit of relief, I realized $5 not much, but to the people that I've been talking to and that they've been talking to me. They tell me $5 is a lot to them sometimes andl I say well, you know it is $5. It is not going to be a whole lot and they say, yes, but $5 is a lot sometimes but anyway, this is where this comes from. So, Iv wanted to see if it would be a possibility. Well, I've talked to Teresa, and she said it's probably not something that we could do butlthought I'd bring it up to see ifit would be something that we could do to show good faith to our folks right here in town to either take this off or suspended it for a while. I do not have a timeline. It was just something that came up  between the people and me.  Mayor Gohman asked Ricky Royall what would be the impact on that?  Ricky Royall reported when we set up the capital improvement, we set it up under the water fund. With that funding, we have changed it out or replaced some water lines and meters. That is how we went to the remote reads with this fund. If we take it away, then we take away any opportunities to replace water lines? Do things in the water side ofi it. Ifyou even want to consider itlwouldn't personally do anything right now: and the reason Isay that is when this new plant comes into effect if we want to think about doing something, then maybe pull a dollar out of this $5 to help cover some expenses through the 0&M's could possibly be going up. That is how we started generating money to do some of this line replacement, because there just was not any money left over at the end of the year to start with the next year to try to make some kind of improvement to the  infrastructure.  4    Mayor Gohman Well, what you would have to do is take do a rate increase to cover the funds coming out. Yes, sO it is kind of all in the same cookie jar, sO if you are talking essentially about a rate reduction, and we are really at very low rates now compared to Ricky Royall said the $5 is not utilized for 0&M's. It is just utilized for replacing Mike Bailey added recently, we have built the new piping around across the creeks over Eubanks place and improve the water supply volume to that subdivision and to Exxon Road to the people that live out there. Ricky Royall replied yes, that is correct. Clabe F. Webb asked was not that grant money?" Ricky Royall and Mike Bailey replied that inside city limits was used with grant money but outside city limits was used with the Clabe F. Webb said not to do away with the infrastructure funding, which is I am just saying reallocate where the money comes from. Right now, the money comes from $5a month that the citizens pay on their utility bill. However, we are making more than this money on the CD interest that is sitting in an account right now, not drawing interest. We need to designate that interest money, which is greater than the amount of what's going into the infrastructure funding SO I just think it needs to be reallocated and if we drop the $5, we could use that money from the interest and put it towards that and it would be Mayor Gohman replied the CDs are earning compound interest. Reallocating CD Interest  our costs. infrastructure.  C.I. Fund.  more money than what we're making from the $5.  can be discussed at budget workshop. This is a discussion only item. RA Morris left the city council at 6:05 pm for a prior school engagement.  Council  Mayor Gohman has asked if Mike Baily would serve as Mayor Pro -Tem and he has said Resolution 24-04 approving Mayor Gohman to appoint council member as Mayor Pro- Tem. David Scott made the motion to approve Mike Bailey as Mayor Pro-Tem, Clabe F.  accepted with council approval.  Webb seconded the motion. Vote: 3/0 motion carried.  City Secretary  Consider to Remove/Add signatures to the City of Bronte's safety deposit box, all Mike Bailey made the motion to remove Gwen Dyess from all City's accounts, Clabe F. Clabe F. Webb made the motion to add Mike Bailey to all the city's accounts, David Scott  certificates of deposits and all City of Bronte funds. Webb seconded the motion. Vote: 3/0 motion carried. seconded the motion. Vote: 3/0 motion carried.  Financial  5    Resolution 24-05 approving Coke County Tax Assessor-Colector Gina Williams to Clabe F. Webb made the motion to approve Gina Williams, Coke County Tax Assessor- Collector to calculate City. of Brontes 2024 Tax rate, Mike Bailey seconded the motion.  calculate City of Bronte Tax Rates for 2024.  Vote: 3/0 motion carried Housing  Consider approving 2024-2026 Commissioners to Housing Authority of the City of Bronte Mike Bailey made the motion to reappoint Marget Charlesworth and Anthony Lopez as board representatives as commissioners 2024 - 2026 term, David Scott seconded the  motion. Vote: 3/0 motion carried  Ordinance  Consider replacing Building and Substandard Commission Board Member. Mayor Gohman reported since David Scott is now on city council, he cannot serve on BSCB, Gwen Dyess said that she would serve on the BSCB, if no discussion could Ihave a motion to replace David Scott and appoint Gwen Dyess to this board. David Scott made the motion to replace David Scott and appoint Gwen Dyess to the Building & Substandard Board; Clabe F. Webb seconded the motion. Vote: 3/0 motion  carried Water water)  Review Drought Contingency Plan (TCEQ requires every three years since we wholesale David Scott asked since we supply Robert Lee water is there anything in our drought plan Ricky Royall explained the contract with Bronte and Robert Lee that must follow our drought plan. The way the contract read is pertains to Oak Creek only. David Scott asks is there a threshold when you tell Robert Lee we do not have water. Ricky Royall replied ifBronte we can pull out of Oak Creek. David Scott replied soi ifwe cannot dot that anymore and were just on wells, then Robert Lee is out of water? Ricky Royall replied according to the contract that it how is written. Mayor Gohman replied other than that all the trigger points stay the same. Clabe F. Webb asks what is the difference between the level we are at now and the next level? Ricky Royall, this level is volunteer, and next level would be mandatory water restrictions. 8:00 pm at night till midnight. Midnight till 10:00 am in the morning is the only time they will be watered and has to be handheld hoses and no car washing. Ricky Royall reported the state makes this since we are a wholesaler, and the council has to review it every three years. If we were not a wholesaler and the population is like over 5 or 7000 anybody less than that population does not review it if David Scott made the motion to approve the Drought Contingency Plan with grammar corrections, Clabe F. Webb seconded the motion. Vote: 3/0 motion carried  that would stop that, or we, just continue until we out of water?  they do not wholesale water.  Financials  6    April Aging Report  Clabe F. Webb made the motion to approve the April Aging Report as presented, Mike  Bailey seconded the motion. Vote: 3/0 motion carried  Informational Reports  Mayor Gohman attended commissioners court and it looks like the creation of an emergency services district in Coke County will be moving forward with this. The commissioners have a lot of work to do and not much time to do iti in. They are taking all the signatures that they have and there are a bunch of sequential events that have to happen including public hearings, that sort of thing. So, they are trying to manage that and get all those things done by August 19th and that is the deadline to get it on the November ballot. Ihave asked for more realistic guesstimations of what it is going to cost. The stuff we got before was inflated. Houston will put together real numbers. Once I get that I will report back to you. It is in the commissioner's hands. We do still have an lalso went to Concho Valley Council of Governments and met with the executive director, Erin Hernandez, to discuss grants. The Lions Club met with representatives from most of the churches to talk about what we can do to help the citizens. How can we find out what the needs are and what we can do? We talked about a lot about things like Daycare at the Baptist church but there are sO many upgrades to their infrastructure that they just could not do it. Imean the hoops that the state makes you jump through just draconian, my goodness. One of the other things that came up was kids get meals at school and for some of these kids that is the only decent meal they get. In the summertime, the ones that do not go to go to summer school do not get that meal and SO on Wednesday, they feed a lot of kids, and they send food home with them because theyj just do not have food. When kids in our community do not have food, that is something we need to do something So that was one of the grants that I asked if we could produce and I thought, well, the Council of governments has some list of grants that they have. It is not a list; it is a database it is a huge database. The summer meals for kids she said sounds doable. She does not know until she looks in the area. The barriers to entry on that are not extremely high because it's not a lot of upfront money as compared to a lot of other grant stuff. And so said ift there is somebody with kitchen and refrigerator facilities and willing to take it on, she thinks it's extremely high chance that that's doable. Probably not this summer because we are just too close to summer now but next summer, we may be able to implement that. I think that would be a tremendous thing for the city. Clabe F. Webb reported the church serving 75 - one hundred kids on Wednesday night. The next one is junk vehicles, she thought she could put that together as well. Find us a grant for that during one of our clean ups before we are doing the tires, and then she could get us a crusher to come in and take junk cars and dispose of them for us. Emergency warning system. At my house if there is a strong north wind, we do not hear this siren. Over at Ricky's place, he does not hear. Where RA lives and in that part of town they don't hear it unless the conditions are just right and we had a potential F4 in our county and if that would have hit either one of the communities, we would have had a major disaster sO we really need to a better system. 911 dispatch set off the siren. It  emergency service, just coming out of Robert Lee.  about.  7    goes through radio towers. Ifwe could get more of them to cover the town, at least, ift they get seti it off, at least we will know. Mike Bailey mentioned I would much prefer that to the solutions that San Angelo did, and they just send you a text on the phone. That is not good. Mayor thinks that for public safety like that there would be grants out there. So, she lasked about possibly some housing for EMS if we do go to the ESD because when you start you have to have someplace to put the first responders. You cannot wait to collect taxes to do that, sO she said would look and see if you could do that. If there is a bad storm there is not a place for shelter in Bronte. The citizens in the past could use the The is a grant database that resides at the Tom Green Library and specialty databases like this are user friendly. She is willing to train us to use the database. I would like to research the fire department, the depot and anything we can think of for the training session and see what is out there. As far as grant writing, CVCOG is hiring a grant writer at the end of the summer that will be available to us and CVCOG is a wonderful opportunity for us and a great resource. We did have someone ini the past that would help us with grant writing, but this person did not work for us, just to look for any grants. What Igot a hold of Jason Luna from USDA. He has a lot of grants for improving houses and taking houses that do not have adequate insulation and providing that for them, there are al lot of programs out there for that, and sO I suggested that he go to the Lions Club and present to them. The trick is finding people who are in need, sO I mean other than just going around knocking on doors, you have to find out who actually needs, and a lot of people will not ask. So, the Lions Club got all the churches together, SO the churches are at least going out and looking in the community to see what needs there are. Also, he mentioned that the Galilee have a home repair program as well and he said that their representative willl be here sometime to talk about, you know, what's in place now and he said that would be a real good resource to ask him about because it's not-for-profit it's, Clabe F. Webb asked what do we do if we have one of those horrible situations where we have a terrible tornado, or something hit us? Mayor reported we would call FEMA. Clabe F. Webb said there is nothing the city can help the people with. Mike Bailey mentioned the mayor would get a disaster declaration and funding would come in and help cleanup, without the disaster declaration, people would be on their own to cleanup. David Scott reported the tornado that went through Silver was seven football fields wide and traveled, what, twenty-eight miles. That is a pretty wide path across Bronte. It had Pilot study is underway. We have three pilots going on at the same time. They are Paul, DuPont and Terrifies. They are all doing the same thing; we will pick the one we like when We have a new city official workshop on June 12th in Abilene. If are interested let us know  isv working on that.  basement at the school but that is not an option anymore.  about alternative water supplies? That would go through TWDB.  it's a charity type of thing sO we got a lot of opportunities.  core wind speeds in excess of two hundred miles an hour.  it is that time.  if you want to attend.  8    Utility Director - We've had a couple of leaks this past month. I am sure you all noticed the gas company has been around preparing a lot of leaks that they had found. Michael went to school last week, but he must wait until this school has been presented to TCEQ before he is allowed to take his exam and sO hopefully within a few weeks he can take Plan to host the Fort Concho Water Utilities Association meeting on June 19th. That is an organization where San Angelo our region we come together every month at different Plan to start in June working on some of the lines going to Humble Road. When it goes through Mike Arrott's fields he has some terraces that once the line is put in, he will David Scott mentioned a long time ago we had some much rain it ran in front doors of houses and after that right across from the football field parking lot behind James Vaughns house they put in a waterway ditch through those each one of their properties through there to that other street to carry the water off. Now! Iknow that the waterway had not been maintained and it is grown in Mesquite trees. Who is responsible for that is the city. Ricky Royall said the last it was cleaned, the county cleaned it. Daivd Scott said, I think that's something that we need to kind of find out something because, you know, I don't know they will ever get that kind of rain again, but if we do, Idon't know that that area will carry the water off with all that. Ricky Royall said we would check into that. Secretary - Buzz and I attended the TMCN meeting in Abilene regarding time management. May 22nd another is being held in San Angelo. Spoke to Ms. Gentry with the food bank and the process has changed. We need to as much as possible donate  another test.  locations and discuss maybe new rules.  replace his terraces to keep some of the flooding from happening.  here in Bronte.  With no further business the meeting was adjourned at 7:04 pm.  Faul Dohmepn Paul Gohman, Mayor  ATTEST:   balld Teresa Ballard, City Secretary  SPNin  9