Built in City Council meetings September 10th, 2024 530 PM right-room Harris Center Hope you're enjoying what everyone on Twitter is calling false fall So nice and cool this morning this afternoon was warm. We'll see what happens. Yeah, my leaves are falling so it's good We're gonna start this evening off with the pledge of Allegiance flag led by Councilmember Dave Covington, followed by the pledge to the Texas flag led by Chief of Police Larry Bird, and then Craig will lead us in our invocation. He would please rise. Please join me in the pledge. 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. I'll give the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God, one indivisible. Please pray with me. O, the God, we come to you, Jesus holy precious name. Lord, we thank You for this place and for this wonderful fall weather. And Father, we thank You for the processes that have brought together the items that we will work on tonight. And Father, we desire that all of this in process and in product bring You nothing but honor and glory. And we thank You that we are in this place and your instruments in it. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. All right. We will call the September 10th, meaning to order at 532. And first item on our agenda is public comments. If anyone wishes to address the council on any matter, not on our agenda, now is the time to let us know. There being no public comments, we will move on to the next item, which is Consin agenda. It's 3 through 9. I'll go ahead, before I read them all, I'm going to go ahead and we'll pull items in 9, which are related to funds going to for the American Rescue Plan. So we'll go and I'll pull those off and I'll read items 3 through 7. Item 3 is approving the minutes of the August 27th City getting. Item 4 is appointments to the following boards and commissions, the historic preservation board, we're reappointing TC. Is it? Light? OK. I want to say light, but sometimes Ann West and appointing Eric Urban to replace Tannie Baggierly and on the Civil Service Commission, we're reappointing Jerry Samu. Item five is adopting a resolution approving negotiated settlement between Atmos City's steering committee to energy corporation mid-text division regarding the company's 2024 rate review mechanism filing. Item six is authorizing the city manager to execute agreement, the federal Texas Council of Governments to continue funding for the volunteer coordinator position for the Belton Police Department, okay senior adult outreach program and item seven is authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with Flixbus for the commission of a bus stop for Greyhound lines. If anyone wishes to pull one of those or more though, let us know if not the chair would entertain the motion. Move, we approve the consent agenda. Ones 3 through 7. Second. We have a motion a second to adopt item 7. Over say aye. Aye. Those opposed? All right. So items 3 through 7 are passed as 6 0. Mayt is resolution and reallocating funding received from the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds a part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to certain projects in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Glad to be back. These two items relate to the allocation of federal funding through the ARPA funding provided to the city in 2021. Just go through these rules really. Item number eight is a resolution that reallocates the ARPA funding that we talked about at the last council meeting. You may recall that after some discussion we made a recommendation to you to reallocate the available dollars, $90,000 to United Way of Central Texas to Belton residents needing help with housing, rent, and utilities. This is the portion of that funding that has to be spent by the end of this calendar year by December 31st. We also identified $385,000 in earned interest income. That funding has no time or use limitations and as we talked about last time, the Council appointed a subcommittee to make a recommendation to the in October and we'll bring that back to you at that particular point time. So the item number eight is the resolution reallocating that $9000 formally tonight and if you'd like to go ahead and do number nine Item 9 is authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the United Way of Central Texas and the city of Belton regarding allocating the thousand in American Rescue Plan Act funds for utility and housing assistance for Belton residents. So this will be a specific MOU between not a way of central Texas and the city regarding that $90,000. There are some conditions that are recommended as a part of that MOU. The assistance would be available to city-belching residential applicants only. This would be for one-time assistance with a $3,000 cap. The assistance again would be for housing utilities and rent. We would look for a report from United Way by early December to ensure that all that money has been spent. If there is any leftover, we can deal with that at that point in time with that last council meeting in December. But we have all the assurances that the funding will be certainly spent by that point in time. That was a reason for the designation, too, you may. There is a proposal for a 10% fee for administration, $90,000. That would be $9,000 to United Way. And as a result of that, then we would recommend approval of the MOU and authorization for the city manager to execute that and I'll answer any questions you might have. All right, so we've read both of those motions and stamps presented. So if you guys have any questions on those or would like to make a motion on either one or starting it with eight? Are you accusing yourself? I am abstaining from both. Yeah. Thank you. I'm blind to it saying. Yeah. So yeah, at both time, Stephanie being a director of president. For three more days. For three more days. Yes. United Way Central Texas. If the money's not spent by December 6th, then we have to spend that money before the end of the year. Is that correct? Correct. Out to them. Doesn't satisfy? No. No, it hasn't been spent. Interesting. But again, I think we have all the assurances that with the demand out there for those types of issues. We have a good time to understand from the executive director that they're ready to go and we're ready to go. We had experience of doing this the last time. Again, the need is there and we feel like there should be no problem at all in ensuring that that money gets out the door and meets the needs of the community. I think that's a great move to prove item eight is presented. Second. I also move to prove item nine is presented. Second item nine. All right, we have a motion to accept items eight and nine, making the council very efficient. Would anyone have any comments before we vote? I just appreciate the way that the staff does work with the United Way from the very beginning of the ARPA funds. I think we've done a really excellent job working with the Chamber of Commerce and Whole Citizens. I'm proud of the way we've handled that. Money. Yeah, it's a great partnership. And especially this time of year between now and Thanksgiving and leading into Christmas, I guarantee those funds will come in handy. All right, all in favor? Say aye. Aye. Those opposed? All right, so it passes five with one at thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you guys. All right, the reason we get elected, pass the budget. Item 10 is consider ordinance adopting Belton's strategic plan. Fiscal year 2025 to 2029. Mr. Liste? Really, there are no additional comments. We've presented this item to you as background and then certainly in the public hearings and the other issues we've had it on the website for quite some time and so we certainly recommend approval and it's adopting the strategic plan for the next five years. All right. Well, the chair would entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to approve item 10 is presenting. Okay. We have a motion a second to adopt a belt and strategic plan. Any comments? I will make one comment. We have a motion a second to adopt Belton Strategic Plan. Any comments? I will make one comment. I've had several people in the last few weeks really talk about Belton and how it's changed since it was, since 20, what, 10 years ago, especially in downtown. And so again, it doesn't happen on accident. It happens on purpose and strategic planning is a big part of that. So thank you to the staff for doing this. Mr. Mayor, I thank you for continuity in that along with the fact that it just continues to be looked at every year, but to build upon itself and then to be the basis for the budget and the dollars that are spent and allocated appropriately. I think it's done better here than any place else on that. All right. All in favor for adopting the strategic plan? Please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Passes unanimously. Item 11 is a consider an ordinance adopting the city's Belt and Fee and Raite schedule for fiscal year 2025. Miss Casey. Thank you, Mary Council. I've presented to you twice. I'll be glad to do it a third time if you would like. Otherwise, there were no changes. Record from the last conversation. Recommend that you adopt the ordinance, establishing the fees and rates for FY25. All right. Any questions or the chair would entertain a motion? Move to approve item 11. This is presented. Motion second to approve item 11. All in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? All right. Item 12. Conduct a public hearing on the fiscal year 2025 tax year 2024 proposed ad volume tax of 0.525 cents or 0.525 dollars per 100 of taxable value, which is effectively a 1.75% increase in the tax rate. This, I need to read all that stuff, right? You don't have to. Okay. Well, it's bold and underlined, but I'll leave it as it is. Great sadness. And a lot of sarcasm. Yeah. I can't believe we made it here. We're finally here to adopt the budget. After our journey began February 1st, Sam reminded me of that. Yeah. A lot of months. A lot of hard work from my staff. Bring this to you. And I'm going to have a beer after this. So let's talk first about taxes. Was that a tier I saw? So City Council proposed a tax rate of 52.25 cents per $100 of value for tax year 2024 which is our fiscal 2025. That's a little more than one cent less than last year's tax rate of 5326. That rate does exceed revenue tax rate of 5135, but it's lower than the voter approval at 5260. That's why we have to have this public hearing tonight. So I want to take you to that. You've seen that before, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. Two things of note is our property values again increased by 8.42% to just over $2.3 billion. The tax rate of $52.25 brings in $730,000 additional levy for the city as a whole. And the effect of that tax rate on the taxpayer, the average home value increased by 8.39% to $296,559. The 52, 25 rate would, that taxpayer would pay $93 more than they did than the average taxpayer did last year. But the interesting thing is so when we compare our proposed tax rate to our surrounding cities, the city of Belton is the only one that went down that much. Belton ISD, they went down just slightly essentially flat. All of the other cities, taxing entities on this page anyway, increased their tax rate. Two of those over three cents and the others 1.3 cents. Everybody else is adopted there, only the two that have not is is Belt and in Harcour Heights. I believe Harcour Heights is meeting tonight to adopt their rate. So with this table, you can see how we compared to our kind of surrounding cities. What we always like to do is compare our total tax rate to our neighbors to the north. With the tax and entities here for the city of Belton residents? It's $2.01 compared to $2.33 total tax rate for the city of Temple Residents. This is a public hearing so we need to open to public comments. All right, this being a public hearing, we will close our deliberations and open the floor for public comments on the proposed advalorem tax rate 52.25 cents per hundred. Anyone wishes to make a comment? All right, if this was next door app or something on Facebook, there would be lots of comments starting out with you people. So, which those people would come here to talk about you people. So again, we'll close the floor and then reopen deliberations or approving the tax rate. Whatever you would. So we have to go to the police. Oh, I'm sorry. That was the public here. That was the public here. Right. Item 13 is the one where we ratify. Okay. Item 13 ratify the increase in total property tax revenue is reported in the fiscal year 2025 annual budget for the city of Belton. It will raise more revenue and then all the other bold underlying stuff. Do I need to read that? No. Okay. No, sorry. Okay. So the fiscal year 2025 annual budget incorporates an increase to total property tax revenue in the amount of $739,330 based upon the tax rate of $52.25 per $100 of taxable. When adopting a budget that raises more property tax revenues in the previous year, the tax to local government code requires a separate vote governing body to ratify the property tax increase that is reflected in the budget. Staff recommends ratification of the increase in total property tax revenue that's reflected in the fiscal 25 budget. All right. We've gone through the budget since February, so we are familiar with it. If you have any comments or questions or chair would entertain a motion. On which item? Item 13. 12 doesn't give him. It was a public area. That was all sharing on one. I was super confused by the order of these. And again I'm going to clarify. Renif- or budget with that revenueount before we do a tax rate. Correct. The local government code, I won't get into that. Yes, it's the budget. It's the budget that determines your tax rate, which is why you have to adopt your tax rate prior to adopting your budget. And the ratification that we're doing now is actually a budget item. It's in the it's in 102 of the local government code as opposed to chapter 26 of the tax code. So it's a budget item. Yeah, the answer is yes. Mark V is because he just said we have to ratify a tax rate before the budget. Tax revenue. This is not revenue. This is not tax rate. Sure. Well, I'll make an emotion to approve the routine which ratifies the increase in total profit. I'll present it. I'll second. We have a motion of second to ratify the increase in property tax revenue as presented in the fiscal year 2025 budget. Any other comments or questions? All right. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Those opposed? All right. Passes unanimously. I'll wait till after. I'll go ahead and say. I did a little analysis of our historical tax rates and revenue from our neighbors. And Belton was one of the higher tax rates in the county 20 years ago, if not the highest. And we've now become the lowest. So again, that doesn't happen on accident. That is something. And like Craig said, continuity. The councils that we've had over the last 25 years or so are very hard for efficient government. So I just wanted to thank the staff. I know you guys don't hear that a lot. Citizens don't recognize it. Guys make this all possible. Thanks for all the work that you guys do. So just need to make say that. All right, item 14 is consider an ordinance adopting the fiscal year 2025 annual budget for the city of Belton. This budget will raise more revenue from property taxes than last year's budget by $739,330, which is a 6.36% increase. Thank you, Mayor. We presented the proposed budget to Council on July 9th of 2024. Having held a public hearing and ratified the increase in property tax revenue tonight, the budget is ready to be adopted. As submitted, the budget includes total resources of the $900,000, $660,000, and expenditures of $48,666,680. Texas local government code requires a record vote for Council to adopt the budget and staff recommends approval. All right, any questions from Mr. Rogers? All right, this being a recorded vote we will do roll call. So it's Casey. We need a motion. We do need motion. Thank you. Appreciate it. I was so focused on roll call. So and there's a suggested, leap way to make this motion in your packet. It's someone who would like to make a motion. I'll make a motion to approve item 14 and I don't see what you're referencing but I'll just read it. Special items, packets different. Okay, special. Okay, I got it. Okay, city councilor. Okay, I didn't have that part up here. I'll make it approve item 14. I move that we adopt the fiscal year 2025 annual budget as presented. Second, we have a motion a second to adopt the fiscal year 2025 annual budget as presented. Second, we have a motion of second to adopt the fiscal year 2025 annual budget as presented. Any other comments or questions? All in favor? Oh no, this is working. Council member Carpenter. Aye. Council member O'Vanian. Aye. Council member Pearson. Aye. Council member Covington. Aye. Council member Booger. Aye. And Marley. Aye. Council Member Covington. Aye. Council Member Booger. Aye. And Mayor Lee. Aye. Here it is. Right, passes unanimously. Zero. Item 15, consider an ordinance adopting the 2024 ad valorem tax rate not to exceed 52.25 cents per hundred of taxable value. This rate tax rate will raise more taxes for maintenance and operations than last year's rate by the effect of 0.74%. Thank you, Mayor. Management recommends a tax rate of 52.25 cents per $100 of taxable value. There's two components to that tax rate. The rate for paying debt services 5.74 cents. The maintenance and operations component is 46.55 cents, bringing the total to 52.25. Because this rate is above the no-new revenue rate of 51.35, at least 60% of the governing body or five of you must vote in the affirmative to pass. If you fail to pass. If you fail to pass a budget by September 30, the default rate becomes the lower of the no-new revenue rate or last year's rate, so the default rate would be 5135. The management recommends approval and I'd be having answered questions. Any questions? Or if someone wishes to make the motion? I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.5225 dollars which is effectively a 1.75% increase in the tax rate. and attack free. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Before I sit. Okay, motion and a second to adopt that. Now, do you have any? Yeah, I just wanted to make a mention that to our compadre who's not here, who would probably bring up a much thorough discussion. I do know there's some projects in here that me as a former parks member included in this rate and this budget. And so that's a reason I'd like to see this bit. I do want to echo David's comments about working super hard to get these rates as low as possible. And then Wayne's always the voice in my other ear that we have some unknowns come in. And so that's why I feel comfortable with where we're at, just for the public to know what we go through and stuff like that. So, all right. Thank you. You have other comments? Yeah, I'll make my comment here. And this is a legal matter. We are required because we have, we are recording more revenue because of increased appraised values. So market has increased. The state legislature wants to make sure that everyone knows that they're not increasing your taxes. The local municipalities are the ones increasing your taxes. And so they put in the law that if you do go up tax revenue revenue, you go up in the tax revenue, you have to say you're going up on your tax rate. There's a difference between revenue and rate. Our tax rate went down. Our praise values went up. And so therefore, effectively collecting more taxes than we did last year because of appraised values. And so while legally it's saying that we have a 1.75% increase x rate, that is not accurate. But it is legal. So, if you want to print something in the press, being in the government doesn't mean you need to be accurate to be legal. Think about that. So, I just, I needed to say that, Belt and ISD said the same thing because they also on their rate, and they were forced to say that they went up on their rate because they're the ones collecting the state's taxes. And it's relevant to note that the increase in appraced value includes the new property. That doesn't mean that it's just the old property that went up in value. It includes the new property as well, which is a big component of for the extra revenue came from here. Yep. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. And any other comments or questions? All right. Sorry. I just had to get that off my chest. So all right. All in favor? Oh, roll calls. Yes, Ms. Casey. Council member Carpenter. Aye. Council member O'Vanian. Aye. Council member Pearson. Aye. Council member Cuffington. Aye. Council Member Booker. Aye. Mayor Lee. Aye. All right. Now that I'm vented, item 16. Consider authorizing the City Manager to your agreement with American Medical Response Angulant Service AMR for the provision of Emergency Medical services within the city. Mr. Fontanot. Mayor Lee, I'm going to the meeting. I'm going to an eighth grade Delta Middle School football game. Yeah, awesome. And join Hope Trust, y'all the handle risks without me. Thanks, Dave. Thank you. Mayor, council, it's that time of year again. It seems like just a year ago, but it's actually been two years to renew our contract with AMR partners and EMS. We're very excited to bring this to you. Just a little bit of history back in October of 2019, Belt and Fire Department in the city of Belt and was going through what many fire department that provide EMS are going through currently. And that's a staffing issues, over time rates and other things that allowed us to explore some alternatives. And we contracted with AMR back in October of 2019 to help solve that issue. Current contract was implemented in 2022, and ends on September 30th of this year. The contract, the new contract would start on October 1th of this year, and in September 26th, 26th, it does have two year renewal options. Talking to SAMH year renewal options. Talking to Sam up renewal options, we really feel every two years to sit down and renegotiate and come to some alternative ways of evaluated performances important. So we're going to continue trying to renew the contract every two years instead of just a renewal. We're going to try to redo it every two years instead of just a renewal we're going to try to redo it every two years. Some of the rates have gone up over the last couple of years which is industry standards. Byron is here to answer any questions. He's the chief of VMS for this region and he can explain the way the rates go up and how they're calculated much more than I can. Currently, AMR will continue to house two ambulances, one at station one and one at station two. They do pay $800 per station per month for their base base in their living quarters. They will be the sole provider for EMS in the incorporated city limits. They'll maintain a mutual aid agreement to ensure that services is that. They'll provide ALS advance lower crews and amylances and they'll follow the medical directives that are set by the city of Belton's medical director. Their standards have changed a little bit, so it's important for you guys to understand the reasoning behind that. Currently, the contract says that they should average seven and a half minutes for any Belton units responding inside of Belton. Well, their regions have changed a little bit. We're on a regional approach with Temple and the rest of the county. So we wanted to ensure that our citizens were taking care of. So we didn't want to just calculate the Belton trucks we spotted in the Belton. We wanted to calculate any trucks we're spotting in the Belton. So we changed that want to just calculate the belt and trucks we spotted the belt and we wanted to calculate any trucks responding to belt and so we changed that contract language up. So we are going to hold them to a standard to average seven and a half minutes inside the city. Now there is an example or exemption to that. There's a 10 minutes down 14 and down 35. If you take a look at it and I think it's in part of your packet. If you look at our fire district maps, those are the outlining areas on Highlight 14 and 35. Those are, we're allowing a 10 minute average response time to which we think is appropriate. They will also participate in any disaster drills or real world effort and bring in a lot of resources for that and they will provide their own building and collections. We meet Byron and I meet monthly and we always go over their response tonics, sure that we're doing our part meeting that first responder obligation, but they're also doing the best to meet their part. So we get reports and we review those. If I were to say Byron and I talk weekly, that was probably an understatement. It's probably more like once or twice a week. We have a very close relationship when it comes to making sure that Belton's thereof. Belton is going gonna continue to provide communication services, first responder on priority one calls. We'll continue to monitor and track the performances and we'll supply EMS with sleeping quarters, eating quarters, working areas, A space. In 2022, in district, that means inside of Belton, there was 2,431 calls, and then outside of Belton, there was 1139 calls. They met that seven and a half minutes, 68% of the time. And then in 2003, the call volume, in district call volume almost didn't change, which is kind of, you know, 2,453 calls. And then they're out of district calls, went down a little bit to 979. And they 71% of the time they met that 7.5. What we're predicting is those numbers will get better now that we separated the 14 and 35 district because those longer response times were now in that average. So for those reasons, staff recommends City Council also authorize a city manager to execute the contract with AMR to provide EMS services. All right. Any comments or questions or chair would entertain a motion? I move we authorize the City Manager to execute an agreement with AMR for the provisions of emergency medical services within the City of Building. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the City of the City of the City of the Manager of Execute the Agreement with AMR. The only comment I'd say is two years ago this was quite controversial and I would say after two years, it's been a great permit and I want to thank you and AMR because I've seen your employees at local restaurants representing the City of Belton well and so I've not seen personally any any other comments before we vote all in favour? Those opposed? Passes 5-0. Thanks Chief. And we receive a presentation and discuss the results of the city of Belton Strategic Communications Assessment. All right, Matt. Absolutely. Mayor Council, appreciate you all very much for getting to this side. And this is one that we're very excited about. This kind of kicked off over the last couple of years we've discussed what are some of the needs that we have through marketing, through communications, and that ever-evolving fee. And earlier this spring we had a meeting, and Council Member Abanium was involved with that as well. It's just what do we need and it kind of became apparent to really have someone come and look at what we're doing, how we're doing it, and formula as a report. And that is in their world called Communications Audit. That was undertaken. We're all part of you participated in that, as well as staff members here and stakeholders within the community. And so it's a pleasure for me to introduce Tom Bryson, he's a VP's with Cooksy. He very decorated but about four decades in this in this game, really knows this stuff and really was helpful in and his crew were very diligent meeting all the measures going through. I think you'll be excited to hear. And ultimately at the end we'll bring up Paul's, got some updates to share on. Stuff we're already doing now. The report's hot off the press and we're already implementing a number of the measures that Tom's going to talk about. So without further ado I'll let Tom jump in. Thank you. Mayor and council good evening. At a say after, boy my early years as a reporter three decades as a municipal communications director in the last four years or so as a consultant, I've been in and out of council for about 40 years and I've never been to one where everybody's in such a good mood. I hope I hope to keep that going. We really appreciate the invitation to be here and the opportunity to participate in this process with you. I've been doing these kinds of examination for quite a now. And honestly, never been to a city where everyone embraced the process biologically as has been done here in Belman. So just by way of an overview. It was April of this year when the city contacted us atxee to conduct a communication assessment. Materials, processes, and with the intent to generate a third party candid review of the department, it's her how it works. And more importantly, what works, what maybe doesn't, how to make it better going forward. It's always intended to be a constructive process. I think we've been able to succeed at that. I know the report has included in your packet. It's pretty detailed, but I think we hit a lot of the areas that we were looking to talk about. The process involved evaluation of operations, resources, technology, interviews with internal and external stakeholders. That was really key. That's one of the most instructive parts of all of this. We did a community survey of residence communication preferences. That's meant to be a splash look, just kind of a taste of what people think and how they prefer to receive their communication. One of the big pieces of it is benchmarking and we went out and got benchmarking information for the City of Anna, City of Bedford, Burleson, Colleville and Georgetown. All were very receptive to our inquiry and gave us a lot of good information that is also detailed in our report. We took a look at gaps and opportunities and then finally offered recommendations that are going to, we've helped added future growth and direction of how this department needs to move forward. The interviews, we made it clear to everyone that we don't want to report who said what, but a lot of what was the conversation, what was that like? And many of the takeaways here were simply that messaging needs to be consistent. There's a theory that we call one voice that the city needs to speak with a singular authority. That city staff sometimes struggles to connect with both younger and older audiences, and maybe a little more emphasis could be placed there. Crisis comms, largely acceptable, but could be room for improvement. A lot of people remarked that they found the website difficult to navigate. And we think using the website as your digital front door can help bolster a lot of that productivity. Forms can be difficult to find but residents express their deep appreciation for the small town feel of everything about Belton and particularly the communications become city. And people noted to us that departmental communication tends to be decentralized. Now that's not unusual in a smaller municipal organization. However, so long as there is a central Oate, all communications coming out from different departments that can help bolster the activity. as long as there is a central OPEC. All communications coming out from different departments that can help bolster the activity. Key takeaways. We believe your incumbent director does very good work, but that staffing over time is needed. Bolster that effort and provide a more strategic approach to communications. The functions across department should be subject to oversight by your director. That's not to say that your director is the giver, not to say that you're responsible for proofing every little bit of everything that goes out, but the director should have functional oversight of everything that happens and be in position to make suggestions, recommendations, whatever the case may be, that's going to further that one voice theory. Formal policies need bolstering. And we suggest consider adding policies about general communications processes and or policy manual, spokesperson policy branding guidelines, logo usage, photography and filming, and especially right now AI. Artificial intelligence is something I know we're doing a lot of research at the agency on AI is suddenly exploding on the horizon, particularly in communications. It is right now where social media seemed to be 20 years ago, something that's coming out as fast and furious and something that a lot of people haven't been able to put a policy. I swear yet. And that's important to get a handle on it before it grows out of proportion. And then content planning really is the key to a strategic approach. There are certain things that are going to happen, or year round, that you know are coming up at various times of year, planning for that content and social media, website, eNews, whatever the case may be. There are one-opened throughout the year. Those will populate that calendar as we go as well, but if there's a content calendar in place that all departments have access to, the more cohesive the message is going to be. Like I mentioned, your main website should be your digital front door. We understand from the survey responses and from a lot of people we talk to that Facebook gets a lot of traffic and that's good. It should, however, we believe that everything should drive to the website. Everything from eNews to social media should drive to the website as a final place people can go to find out news and information about city activity services and events. Maximize those internal and external partnerships to help amplify messages, those partnerships with community groups, Chamber of Commerce, ISD, make sure those are all in place. E-newsletter. As much as people enjoy hard-copy newsletters these days, still, I know in many cities that we work with, there are a lot of folks that say they really still want to have that tangible piece of paper in their hands. E-news can be a much more timely way to get information out. And we believe the E News letter that the city puts out needs to be expanded and capitalized on in that manner. And you have a sizeable balance in peg funding right now that is not being used at all. I think that a legal opinion on what that can and cannot be used for is probably warranted. The survey, heavy emphasis on Facebook and the main website. Non-city source information comes a lot from social media as well as local TV news about in general in the Temple Daily Telegram. But overall satisfaction with city communications on the scale of five ranked just shy of four. So I mean it's satisfied but room to move. Which is good news. So the bottom line we believe that this is the department working in and for a city of story to Spelton can benefit from a refresh that is aided by the staff over time. Greater attention to content planning and messaging oversight. Attention to driving information traffic to and through the main website, the expansion of that Dean newsletter and amplification of messaging through these partnerships in the community. That will result in an invigorated department that plans strategically and proactively not reactively. What I've said to a lot of people on a lot of occasions, having done this job for three decades in a couple of different cities in North Texas, I know it's very easy to fall into the habit of running from tasks without a lot of time to plan strategically or proactively. We believe implementation a lot of these records will help your department do that. We'll be happy to answer any questions. All right, thanks. This is just a presentation and so discussion. So any questions? Is there a city in the area that you feel like doesn't truly exemplary job, but we could kind of look at their website just maybe still an idea or two? Oh, that's one of the best things to do and one of the things that we highly recommend to add are state and national associations that steal as many good ideas as you can wherever you can get them. Temple does a very good job at their communications department. I would suggest back in our report in the benchmarking, there's a number of good cities that do the job really, really well. And Paul can also give you a lot of pointers that we have from other cities that we communicate with regularly and close social media groups of people that do the comms job. So there's a lot of good work out there to emulate. Thank you. How much does Matt pay to say that about tonight? Checks in the mail. Paul, would you like to think a few comments? First just, I think it's important to note for David Tumus purposes that the Belt and Journal was more popular than the telegram in that survey. That's pretty awesome. I mean it really really is a week out of a daily so mayor and council members I'll just say in about six weeks I'll have been here for 13 years. Oh my gosh. I know. Shocking isn't it? So and and I'll say that you had a long you had long hair at that time right so you know yes it's lost a lost few serve this council and these residents. And nothing in this report was really surprising or shocking to me. I just want to express appreciation for Tom and his team. Super professional. They did what they said they were going to do when they said they were going to do it. And I think they brought back a report that's really, really helpful. It's if you look up here, so we've already gotten to work. We've had it about two weeks, I think, the final copy. So we're implementing already. One of the things mentioned was, hey, new residents to your community can't find your library on their social media pages because of the Lena Armstrong name. So while the Lena Armstrong will still be on the physical library, we plan off of Facebook and Instagram so that anybody that's coming can actually find our library on social media. That was a low hanging fruit that we just said we can make this change. Content calendar, it's in teams, it's available to the social media committee. They've been briefed and notified about that. I meet with them on a monthly basis. So on Thursday, we're going to go in and look at that content calendar and start to access that in plan. So that's one of the items that we've done as well. The PIG opinion, we've contacted TML and talked to their legal department and gotten some information from them. They've given us a name of an attorney, a firm that we can seek out and get an illegal opinion. So that process has started. Some of the other takeaways, I'll say that the E News letter, I think it's a phenomenal idea. It takes some time to implement that, figure out how we're gonna roll it out and some logistics on the back end. It's part of my goals for next year. The professional associations, I've been a part of the Texas Association of municipal information officers now for the entire 13 years, and then a national organization as well. And I served on the for five years on their awards committee. So I've gotten some pretty good experience through that professional association. And you know, in discussions with Matt, we feel like in our situation, our staff that are on the social media committee that they need more involved in these associations. So we are bringing them in and we've added three staff, M. Tamiya, we're considering bringing them to conference here. And so we're moving in that direction to help the other people that are involved in social media to have that experience rubbing shoulders with other really great professionals in the state. Website, you know, agree with everything that there we've made some minor tweaks based on feedback from the survey, but we will do more this coming year. As far as social media oversight, I, Sam and Matt have been great over the years. I've had free reign of social media for a long, long time and I work with everybody that has social media. The challenge there is time. So if there's oversight not being done, it's because my attention is at things elsewhere that need to be addressed in a more timely manner. So, and then staffing that something for you guys to consider next year. But I'll just add that the way that I view this report is that it's filled with really small and things that can easily be implemented, but that as we implement those small and simple things that it can have and the future is really, really significant. And if there's one thing I'll leave you with today, I think that's it. This is comprehensive report filled with a lot of great information. We're taking it seriously. We're adjusting things and trying to make our communications better. But we feel like it will be markedly improved in the coming years because we're doing those small and simple things. Awesome. Thank you. Any other answer questions? I'll just echo what I've already said. It's better. We are all going to get somewhere sometime. It's better to get there on purpose than on accident. This is a great step. I think that's really good looking forward to the output that you guys have. The only question I have is, as we start looking at broadening our e-newsletter, typically that's an email form, our other emails could then suffer spam because if we start hitting a lot of bad addresses or something from a lot more emails, then your email or our domain name could then get blacklisted. I'm assuming we would look at like constant contact or some third party to help distribute that so that the city doesn't get, anyway, I don't know. So we right now, Robely, already for the belton news that you get. Yeah, so we're already using Robely. We would just you know ramp up that. I've got several organizations I'm tied to that I stopped getting their emails and I realized they amped up their locations and put them on a blacklist. So. All right. There being no action. No motions to be made. We will stand adjourned at 6.22 p.m.