and James 40 and if we would humbly submit ourselves before you that you would lift us up. And I just pray that you lift us up tonight in this room no matter what we're going through. I just pray that your mighty hand is honest tonight. I pray for wisdom. I pray that you would grant discernment on this council and father be with us tonight and we're just so grateful for your son in the price that he paid on the cross and so we just pray that in all things that we do we glorify your name and we pray that your name would be known in Jesus your name would pray amen. But what I believe is that we apply it. And I am not stating some America. And do the re-budget of courage and sayings, motivation, commitment, need to do the same with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you, Councilman Mormon. I'm moving into agenda item number two. This is our public comment section, Mr. Lasher. We have anyone signed up for public comment no speakers at this time thank you serve so at this time we do have a proclamation or the constitution wait so miss miss Burkett would you come up and I'll get you around the front. So tonight we have a wonderful moment in this beautiful population. Whereas September 17, 2020 marks the 237th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention. And whereas it is fitting in for a court of official recognition to the magnificent argument of the Constitution of the United States and its memorable anniversary and to the patriotic celebration which will commemorate the occasion. And whereas the tradition of celebrating the Constitution started by the daughters of the American Revolution, by petitioning Congress to set aside September 17th through the 23rd annually to be dedicated for the observance of the Constitution week. And whereas, public wall, 915 guarantees the issue of a proclamation every year by the president of the United States of America for claim the week beginning September 17th and the end of September 23rd of each year as a Constitution week and ask our citizens to reauthorize the ideals of the bringers of the Constitution. Now therefore I germine with words by virtue of the bringers of the Constitution. Now, therefore, I, Jeremiah Luthur, by virtue of the authority vested in me as Mayor of the City of Hebe, and the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim September 17th through September 23rd as constitutionally for the City of Hebe. Thank you. What a beautiful proclamation that was. Moving into agenda item number four, we've moved this up in our agenda. Just a lot of people asking for the council comments and the city manager want to make sure that it's higher on the priority list. So at this time, Mr. Laster, do you have any comments? Thank you, Mayor. Just one is Mr. David Gonzalez in the room. He is your new director of community development, David bow down and say hello. David comes to us from he's been 20 years in the city of Rockwall then he retired then he went and worked for some other cities and he wants to work here and I said, are you sure? And he said, yes, I did. So we be told him all about this place and how much fun we have. And the challenge is here. And he is very enthusiastic about being here. So David, we're glad to have you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Well, we're happy to have you. And then last thing I have is understand Suzanne. circumstances. All right. Thank you sir. Thank you. Well, thank you. We're happy to have you. And then the last thing I have is understand, uh, Suzanne, I hope I'm not getting ahead of this, but we had something called the soheath that happened where we threw out some seeds for blue blonde, blue bonnet plantings and we cannot wait for next spring to get here. This I believe was on along, uh, Hey, Suzanne, can you come out here and remind me on the so he stuff where was that occurring that was that heath crossing in 549 yeah okay so come early spring look look at that interstate it's gonna be beautiful you're gonna have a it's a beautiful color on blue bonnet Indian paintbrushes and some other native prairie flowers. I think you're really going to enjoy and we can't think enough Suzanne and the people in the park's boards for making this happen. Thank you. and the reserve and the area on top drop in Chris tuning where the big sign that I would plan to go around the base there. So hopefully I'll take off you in one you get your first and you're two and three expanse. So, there you go. Thank you Susan. And yes, I echo that Mr. Shive did a lot of work and Mr. Cox did. So, big thank you. Any other items Mr. Lajren? Just big news is that we are now back to stage one. We hope to stay there for a very, very, very long time and and we're already having meetings about getting well number one drill to your pretty soon. So we're moving forward incrementally and getting new water sources secured for the city. Thank you, Mayor. Very good. Thank you. Council at this time. You have any items of comment? Ultimate Rufo. Sure. I just like at some point. You have a conversation about the water tickets. Yes. Yes. In fact, it will hopefully be on the next meeting. I think I think I think we were strapped on a little bit of time. Sure. So yes. Very much so. I echo that. I agree. Any other council members? Have any comments at this time? Okay. All right. Very well. Moving on into our consent agenda agenda item 5A. Actually regarding the minutes of August 15th, 2024 budget work session special meeting. August 19th, 2020 floor, special meeting, and August 27th, 2024 regular meeting. I believe all council has had time to review these meeting minutes. So at this time, the chair will open the floor for emotion. I'll make a motion to approve. We have a motion to approve by Councilman Lieber. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, we have a motion seconded by Councilman Rufo. So the motion moves all of those in favor say aye. Aye. So the post, it passes unanimously. I have to abstain from the next team that was adhered to the councilman. Me too. Councilman Krauss and Councilman Goldwell. Thank you. Okay, items for individual consideration. This is 6A update regarding the status of Rampwell County Strategic Plan 2050. We have a wonderful individual that's here with our Community Steering Committee at the county level Miss Cindy Brown if you'd like to take the left and Thank you mayor. Thank you city council. I am here to update you on the 2015 strategic plan And I think we have some slides for you Can you hear me? I can. Okay. Yeah. First I'll tell you about our purpose. Our county is growing rapidly. I don't have to tell you guys that, looking at your agenda. And the growth brings both opportunities and challenges. Our purpose is to think strategically and purposely identifying opportunities and challenges, creating an integrated plan for success. Now, right now, we have the opportunity that to shape and influence what our quality of life looks like are economic vitality, purpose of all design, civic richness, what the people who work here want, the people who visit here, what does this look like when we get to 2050? A little update on our process. First, we, we, the first words define and under that basically it's the who, what, and where. The committee structure, the consultant, the key elements. Next we went into the discovery phase. The discovery phase was crucially important. That was a online survey and we yielded over 12,000 individual responses from that survey. And we had public forums, we had public forums on education, economic development, public safety, healthcare, community facilities, services, environmental factors, sustainability, open spaces, historical preservation. That was a big one. Regional community design, transportation, mobility, housing, infrastructure, and economic development. So at each one of those forums, there were interactive boards, so the public could, there were sticky notes, and there were questions. And so we asked for the public's input on each one of those boards. And we also had a section where the public could speak and ask questions and give their comments. So I think everyone that attended that. And next right now we are developing a plan. So we have come together, the consultants have put together all the data from the public meetings and from the surveys. And we are coming up with specific goals and objectives for what we would like to see in this plan. So, you know, looking at five years,. So, Commissioner's Court will adopt this plan hopefully in spring of 2025. Our progress to date, our steering committee has met every month. And as we progress, we have tried to focus on quality of life. That's a huge one. What affects your everyday quality of life? Strong public engagement, Clare, Clare, on what you as a citizen want in the future. Collaboration and action between the cities within the county. I've never seen the mayors are on this. I know some of the city council members are on this. City leaders are on this. Non-profits are on this committee. I've never seen communication like I have seen in Rockwell County. And I'm so proud of that. So thank you guys for for being involved in that and giving a heath of voice. And the commissioner sport adopted the mission vision values goals and objectives at the last meeting. that in giving heat a voice. The Commissioner's Court adopted the mission vision values goals and objectives at the last meeting. We're pursuing desire development and economic opportunities are looking at how do we do that? Awareness and attention to future opportunities, challenges and certainties, purposeful planning. I love that word purposeful, and considerations for the future. We are keeping the big picture in mind, and the big picture is what do you want Rockwell County to look like in 2050. 50. These some of the words that kept coming up in our meetings were local control, controlling density, preserving open spaces, roads, trails, smarter development. So as we went through this, those words just keep coming back up. So we wanted to make sure that as we are forming the objectives that we keep those in mind. There are definite opinions on what the citizens would like to see and so I appreciate their input and all of the items you have written and all the time she'd taken to speak because we have listened and we have put all that put all that data together. Well we like it or not our community is growing so we need a roadmap and this is the roadmap on how we're going to do to get there. So, um, and this is your opportunity actually we have one more public forum. So as I'm asking that question, what do you want Rockwell County to look like in 2050? You have an opportunity to come to the courthouse on September 25th from five to seven And you will be able to have public comments. I'm sure we will have the interactive boards again. So please come tell us what you would like our county to look like. What is important to you? Because we want to make sure we include your voice in the blank. You can also go to the Brockwell County page and look at the strategic plan information. There's also a Facebook page, Brockville County 2050. You can look on there for information. And I think that's all I have. Unless you guys have questions. Wonderful. Council, do you have any questions? Thanks, the update. Appreciate it. And I would and I would echo there's a there's a few council members that have been up on in these meetings and it has been nice to get together with other cities in the county and actually talk about a plan because we are all fairly uniquely different in what we want to see. But one thing that was pretty consistent was open spaces and really staying true to kind of what I think a lot of people have come to love about Rockwell. So good to see that the county and the commissioners and the county judge are working to bring us all together in a strategic plan that brings our comprehensive plan as to the table. So thank you. Okay, at this time, we will move into agenda item six.b. This is an update on public works building, Mr. Creed. Mayor Gouncil. So Richard here and he's got some slides that we worked very hard to get involved in this in this thing. He's going to talk to you guys through. The clarity might not be perfect, but the real plans kept crashing the slides, so these were created probably at 628. Okay. The real plans kept crashing the slides of these were created probably at 628 So you guys have had plenty of time We had to start over the first time Hurry up before a crash I'll let I'll let Richard note that take over. All right. Let's see. Okay. That's good. That's good. Okay. All right. So they don't put the worst building. So I had another one that didn't make it. We showed the old site, but we'll go with this one. So the, as y'all probably know from the tour, we take out on the property. We're at the kind of the far northwest corner of the property that y'all went away from FM 740 with public public works building. Let me see. Yeah. Okay. So right here is where the current public works area is. And so we're across the road in this open area. The project is originally scoped. We included proving the driveway from about here to here, staying on the existing driveway till we get here and then new concrete around the new structures. We've added an alternate to include a full new driveway, the whole way, which wasn't in the original cost estimate but we're putting that alternate in. Also, the original scope was it's a totally metal building. We've added a brick ledge to the area of front here that's the office space. And we're adding an alternate to bid that as brick on the office area. So those are the two things we changed, based on some comments we've heard from earlier reviews and things like that to the way the scope is originally set out. So we'll see how those come in when we do bid the project and what impact it may have on the budget. This is set up to be expandable. We can go out about six more offices, this correction in the future is needed and we can go out to at least two more bays, this correction if needed, possibly three. So that's kind of the lay of the land there and then we've got detention is here so that we don't have the increases. This is kind of a layout of the detention. It's it's going to catch everything that's from the approved area, run it through pond and we won't be exceeding any existing values coming from the site as it is today. All right, here's kind of a footprint layout of the of the build of the offices and things. As it's set out, there's 10 offices in the office area here. And then we have this is a broker in combination, broker in a conference room with a divider, kind account like we have out here in the community room. Area for receptionists, we've got a skater room, room for computer equipment, things like that. And then a area for the public works folks to input scale information into the system that they need to. This is an area where we've got restaurants, lockers, things like that for men and women. On the first floor and on top of that there's a measurement for a second floor for some storage. That full area is available for storage or things and we have a area here for folks like if we have issues for folks have to be overnight for emergencies and things. There's a place for for folks to stay overnight there, there's showers, lockers and everything that for everybody. This is a drive-through bay. This is in the area that's just open inside and this is another drive-through bay. This is just the expansion of the office area that we saw. Pretty simple, it's got room. It was laid out originally when Hozapal was still here at area with a larger office conference room, also a conference room, training room, actually here, and then other offices. I said there's like 10 offices in here plus the reception area over here. And this is the largest, a larger blow up the high area and the misamene, elevations looking different directions. This is the office area of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the other side of the All right, here's inside looking to the south with the stairs that go up to the Minnesian name. And then here's you see we've got a elevation of a person to show the clearance and things. On the second floor, we've got an opening kind of a gate there for pallets to be pushed in if we get the pork lift, get it up there. And this is just another side view of the misanning and the offices, like through the office structures itself. Okay, so. Okay, okay, good. okay, okay, keep going. So just a little, uh, give you little information of where we're at with it. So we're like, we're be ready to submit 100% plans for staff reviews into this week. Okay, give them a couple of weeks for review and then probably a week or two to address comments or whatever get the documents totally completed and then sometime in like mid October be ready to advertise for bids. Okay, very good. Happy to try to answer any questions. Yes, do you have any questions? Yes, I have. So thank you. Can you remind me two things? One, the structure that we put up, it was like a pole barn structure, just with a canopy over top a couple of years ago. Oh, for storage equipment. Yes, where is that oriented with regards to the building? Well, the thing is, is the ongoing. That's OK. So it's to the, OK. Yeah, it's up over here in the front, correct? It's right there. Oh, so naturally, at any point, the gray area there would be in the new concrete pad with some areas for storage of sandy gravel and things like that. So I have your band to be able to load up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then one other one. So between that and the new structure, will we be able to keep all our equipment under roof? All of it depends on the funds. So the trailers will be under the roof, but all the, well, we're fixing to start plus some of our trackers, we have to put most of the in ones. So the mechanized, yes, but we will be able to, we will be bringing in all of our liquid fields, machinery into the bags every now. That's what I make sure, since we're going to build, that we're putting enough facilities to protect our investments. Yeah, and then the second bay, I know there's some questions about whether or not what we do with it, and I can say, prior truck coming, but when it's available back to Polar Quartz, that gives us a lot of lot more space. Okay, good. Thank you. Councilor. All right. I've got a question. Councilor Councilor Councilor. Just with regards to overall timing. What can we expect in terms of what's targeted completion for this? It's probably going to be like 14 minutes. January, February, 2020, something like that. 26. 26. I'm sorry I'm sorry Yes, fast 26 yes Thank you We wouldn't you anticipate the bid for the brick brick facade What are the estimates for that The cost estimates for the brick facade. Prior to that, what do you have cost estimates? When you expect to receive those costs. Okay. Well, what we've been at the mid-autumn will be probably, already know, early November when we get the bids back. Okay. That'll be an alternate. That'll be an alternate. Yeah, I guess just for the public that it hasn't been involved in the build up to this, obviously, as you saw from the elevations, it's a very utilitarian, intentionally a very utilitarian design. It's a public works facility. It's in our city hall. But I guess we'll take a look at if we want to put any lipstick on it. Right. That was the idea. That's a long driveway, but how long is that driveway? Oh, I don't know. It's a 12 acre chart, so it's on the back side of another property. So, okay. Very well. Any other questions? Councilman Grouse, did you have it? Thank you. All right. Thank you. Very well. You're going to have a bombs fire party for the old building. Yes. Okay. Moving into the agenda item six. See this is a public hearing discussion and action on a resolution of proving he proposed tax rate for the fiscal year 2024 2025. Mr. Ayers. Good evening, Mayor and Council. This is a public meeting and discussion, we're going to the tax rate. This is this presentation and we'll do a review of the tax rate. This and this presentation will do an overview of the tax rate. A breakdown of the post tax rate, a comparison to previous years of the public notification that was done under state law. And the impact on property owners and the public can. Just overview of the proposed tax rate. The proposed tax rate that we came to conclusion on our budget final budget workshop was 0.290311 per 100, $100 of a SIS valuation. The tax rate is divided into two, four rates. The maintenance and operation rate is at the 0.191375 and your debt service rate, which covers all your interest and sink-and-fun debt obligations is calculated at 0.098936. nine three cities. Purpose of this tax rate is to fund essential services and repay bit locations. The proposed tax rate right now, the maintenance and operation, also referred to as MNO, applying services such as public safety of parks, streets and administration. That portion of the rate is set at the 0.1917375 for $300 of assessed value. The debt service is used, is set for debt obligations related to capital improvement projects related to the general funds, such as your parks, the public safety facility and the public works building. Those are just examples of what's covered in that, which is this will be separate from funding water and sewer debt, which is actually calculated in the utility rate to cover that debt on that side. So the total proposed rate for FY25 is $29031, for $100 on the assessed valuation. In this graph, it's a breakdown from this computer, this year, this year 2021 to the proposed, just giving a breakdown of your total tax rate, the M&O rate and the debt rate. At the very top there, that green line that you see there is the voter approval rate that was calculated for each fiscal year. So as you can see, as a year has progressed that the voter approval rate is decreasing. decrease it. Here is your property assess valuation trend. The senior freeze was implemented between fiscal year 2018 and 2019 and you actually see it's starting to take effect. You started out the first year in FY 2019 at 360 million of loss valuation from the senior priests up to FY 25, where is D done practically, close to double. And in purple is a new value that's been assessed and FY25 that this value has decreased. But your valuation, the existing value has increased over time. Just, just, uh, over the other notification that was done, as require by SAVAR, August 29, 2024, uh, if you publish the, the public notice in the Rock-O-A-R event, uh, prior to that, we posted a notice on the website on August 22nd. For the day, we're conducting the public hearing to gather input from residents and property owners. And this is the impact on property owners. This is just an example. Say someone has a necessity property value of 750,000. The growth factor rate is that 0.29031 for $100 of a sense value. you take that $750,000 of assessed valuation and you divide it by 100. It brings down to $7,500 and you take that $7,500 and multiply it by the tax rate and you get the $2,177 dollars and 34 cents and annual property tax sales that will be assessed when they're property. And this includes both your maintenance and operation and debt service payment. And then the next steps will meet to open it up for public comments and input on the proposed tax break. Consider a public input, post potential amendments to the proposed tax break, consider Republican put, post potential amendments to the proposed tax break based on feedback and then vote on the resolution to approve the proposed tax rate. The final adoption of the tax break will be on September 24th at the regular City Council meeting, same time, same place. Any questions or comments? Council, any questions in the sun? Council, we call the welcome. This is questions for Jay or just discussion amongst us? Yeah, yes, that. You know, I'm good. Council, we're going to be good. Council, that. No, that's from the one. Sorry. Good. Councilor Weaver. No. Councilor Johnson. No questions at this time. Councilor Groud. No thank you. Thank you. At this time, Council, what we'll do is we're going to be public hearing, and we'll do our second. Okay, so at 7.04, we're not in public hearing. If there are any residents that would like to speak before we're again, we want to be the ones who are just ready to bring it. We'll just go back on it. No resume. Good evening, Council, State staff, citizens of Heath. My name is Kenneth Hesch. I'm a member of our Heath Police and Fire Association. I've had a pleasure of sharing my story with many of you already. It's just been a short four months ago when my family police supported my decision to come to the Heath DPS and leave a 17 17 year career of being a fireman to serve in our community right here in Heep. Our association is made up of non-administrative personnel who have the absolute pleasure of providing our citizens with first class emergency response, education, and prevention. We We like to first thank those council members who are in favor of solving our community's unique obstacles with aggressive solutions. While more tax is something nobody likes, myself being a resident, in some situations it is necessary. Our 31 members are proud to consistently report advances in all aspects of our multi-disciplined profession. Our fire service training records have significantly increased this past year. We are documenting more hours than ever before through software, which we have to report to commissions that regulate what we do. Our officers have once again through responsible community policing provided by neither top, safest city in Texas. Something to certainly be proud about. Our communications and working relationships with our third party EMS service is growing. We are training with them more than we ever have before. We have one of the lowest tax rates in the state, but also have so, we also have so many unique obstacles that are in front of us. Continuing to cut taxes year after year is simply not sustainable for the services our citizens deserve and expect us to provide. This year, our association completed a pay study that was presented to city management. The study revealed that we would need over an 11% pay increased to remain competitive with our neighboring agency. Our association decided to present approximately $2,000 annually under their projected pay, so it wasn't such a large expense with us already being behind their current day. Nonetheless, our members understand the process, the large amount of funding our city needs to provide critical infrastructure projects. We appreciate the anticipated 7% raise for officers instead of the 11. That comes at the price of increasing taxes to our citizens and a difference of $1 or $200 annually. Concerning issues to our members is the possibility of not funding a responsible step plan. Without a transparent step plan, without a transparent step plan, at a competitive salary for an extremely rare group of public servants that are triple certified, it could come at an even larger expense that could negate years of progress our members have devoted their time to, losing officers that we have invested 11 to 12 months time and considerable tax dollars on is certainly our most valuable asset. Then comes increased overtime, increased work on staff, increased training funds for new staff and lack of experience. These problems continue to exist, they only grow larger. It comes more and more difficult to maintain, much less, improve, and innovative organization such as ours. If you vote voter approval, it will give DPS an 11% increase, but also a COLA retirement. If you vote the proposed tax rate, it provides DPS a 7% increase with a secure step plan, but no COLA retirement. If you vote the proposed tax rate it provides DPS a 7% increase with a secure step plan, but no COLA. If you elect to vote no new revenue, you would not only take COLA away, but also result in no pay increase. Big picture, resulting in DPS becoming further behind and pay this year and in the future. Regarding number one priority, we'll always be serving our community. Every day our officers have the opportunity to serve hands down the most supportive citizens in the state. Our members are proud to wear the heat patch on our shoulders. We wanna ensure our message of gratitude is clearly heard before you all this evening. It is an absolute honor to be a member and resident of our top notch community. We look forward to the collaborative, responsible growth for the foreseeable future as he remains the best place to be. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Microploratius 17 blue here. I'm a numbers guy. What can I say? So what it really came up to was really a 4.62% increase on our city taxes. And I think that's very reasonable because we go to the grocery store. We didn't get a 4.2% increase on our grocery bills and everything else. They're working efficiently to use the monies that are here and I'm not opposed to a 4.62 percent increase considering the way that you know the services that they provide are triple certified forces. You know those are the type of things that we desire here. That's what it makes us a desirable community. So I just wanted to take that shroud of all those numbers and put it into perspective of what a really impacts when we say you use the 750,000 example what you're talking about like $96 a year, right? I think that's a better way to sell it to individuals when we look at that instead of trying to, you know, put, this is what the end result is, put what the difference is. And it's that little bit of a difference that we're coming out of pocket more for the services that we care so much about and the life of inflation that we're living in right now. And I think it's very reasonable. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any other residents? Mr. Bishop. Good evening. I'm Tom Bishop, 800 Britain plays here in Heath. I've got a simple logic question. We currently have an enormous legal expense, and I would like to know what that figure is for 2025 that we have budgeted for legal expense and what effect that's had on our budget? What percent? What house it changed? Because I know that number, I don't know the number, but I know that number is significant from what it was five years ago. I think five years ago we had a budget of less than 100,000 dollars for legal expenses. So that's my question. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. There are any other residents that would like to speak or against? Very well. At 7.0 we will close the public hearing. Council at this time we will open it up for discussion. Councilman Caldwell. Very well. Councilman Rdwell. Good. Very well. Councilman Rufo. Sure. Um, you know, the last, the last meeting the budget meeting, I think, um, Brian Creed made some really good comments about. We want to be a premier city, and that does cost some money to do. Uh, would be an advice that we spend some time and prioritize our spend. Prior and, um, want to find what our levels of service want to be for each of those areas and then use that from evaluating how much funds are required and starting to rack and stack things and then use that as the defensible basis for our budget. And I like that approach rather than agreeing our rate and then backfilling with things that are needed. I would much rather that we have another budget meeting to be honest and go through some of that stuff and make sure that our budget is very defensible for exactly what it's going to curve. Very well. Councilman Rufo. Councilman Vormen. Yeah, I'd like to say that I appreciate you, Jim, and speaking Tom, Mike, and Kenneth. I agree. I mean, we have to have the top personnel and staff. And I think that we have the right people, but we don't want to lose them. And so it's just imperative that we move the needle in the right direction. I appreciate the previous councils and your ability to keep it flat, But we're experiencing inflation and you know a lot of cities are having to do it. And hopefully everybody would understand that it is imperative that we move the needle and we increase it. Very well. Thank you, Councilman Moore Thank you. Councilman Weaver. Yeah, I'll make a few comments. I guess who has control of the slides? If we go back to the slide and then go to the left. It's a graph. The one that had 2025 to the left and then that graph. So it's. For lion, a litigal mind. It's shown backwards. I like to read left or right, but it's showing, I don't know why. But anyway, push that accounts me. So if you, you know, for those that have followed the tax rate over the last four or five, six years, we've, you know, the, the council has been pretty adamant about maintaining what we call the effective tax rate or the equivalent tax rate, which effectively says, as property values increase, we drop the tax rate by the corresponding amount so that existing properties effectively have a flat tax rate. And we've been able to do that for about five years, I think, now. And again, the concept there is, is as new development occurs, our existing residents don't have to pay for new development, new development pays for itself. And that theory applies to a lot of aspects of what the way we make our decisions up here, including the tax rate. So that's been our goal, that's been our standard bearer for about five years now. As folks have pointed out, inflation is kicking in, competitive salaries are kicking in, the ability to sustain that philosophy is getting more and more difficult. It's still a philosophy that I still hold very close to my heart. I don't like taxes anymore than anybody else does. So we fight to the nail to keep the tax rates as low as we can. To Paul's point, I like to approach a tax rate from the perspective of, let's figure out what our must-haves are versus our wish-to-haves and prioritize those and then calculate a tax rate based on those needs versus the wants. At the moment, we have a tax rate that's a little bit more predefined as a de minimis tax rate, which takes last year's tax rate and last year's revenue. It adds a fixed amount to it. I think at the end of the day, it's still quite close to what we probably need, even if we want through the long process of prioritizing and working the calculations backwards. My anticipation is we're not too far off, but I still think that exercise is worth the effort in doing. So I agree with Paul that we should potentially have another meeting in prior to prioritize those needs so that we can properly calculate a tax rate otherwise we're ending up with a minimum tax rate which is probably not too far off the mark, but it's a little less or it's a little more obscure. So all that being said, you know, as you see that curve was heading down, has been heading down over the years, but now it's turned up a bit for the proposed tax rate. So, you know, I have a bit of heartburn about it, but I understand the need for it regarding increased expenses and remaining competitive. So I just wanted to give a little bit of history and then he voiced my thoughts on those. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Dodson. Yeah, I don't think that rising costs or anything new, it's not a 2025 event. We all saw it coming out of COVID. The cost to do everything and building materials and repairs and everything else has done nothing but absolutely skyrocket. So while I appreciate the drive and desire to be competitive from a tax rate perspective, I think that the overall budget has shown that we have under invested in our city. And I think that Mr. Bishop, your question with regards to legal spend. This last year will spend maybe 1.2 to 1.5 million dollars against a, you know, budget that you mentioned several years ago was about a hundred thousand dollars. So we have been told that these amounts would decrease since, you know, a lot of the work had been done and taking these lawsuits and pushing them forward. That really hasn't come to fruition. So until we get a handle on that, it's one of our biggest risks with regards to whatever tax rate that we land on here today. Because I don't think that staff has come to us for the last two or three meetings with a bunch of fluff and stuff. I don't think that they just pulled out the stops and said, hey, all right, you know, it's open season. Let's just kind of ask for everything that we want. I think that they've been very responsible and I think that they've been very study and measured in the things that they've asked for. So I think that the proposed tax rate that we've been discussing is probably a step in the right direction, but I think that the current budget as it exists today has a massive amount of risk associated with it. And I think that that risk comes in the form of things like litigation. It comes in the form of repairs, which we've completely cratered our road repair budget for the last two years, and have taken every dollar from that and pushed it towards our legal expenses because of the increased amount that legal is cost us. The other thing is the search firm. I'm not sure if the search firm is in the budget for the prospective basis or the overall city manager salary that we may have to spend to get the type of city manager and the level of city manager in order to become the city that we're trying to aspire towards. The final thing that I think Mr. Hesh talked about is DPS. So the overall expense to train as I understand one person in three certifications being fire, police and EMS is about $100,000. You lose one of these people, because we don't have the money in the budget to maintain that. And you've pretty much wrecked everything in your budget on an ongoing basis. So I don't think that there's a lot of fluff in this. I think that it's pretty well defined. And I think what we'll find, Paul, is if we did do a bottoms up, I think what we'll find is that the momentum is probably isn't enough to cover what we really need when you take a look at these risks into our playing right now. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Dodson. Councilman Krauss. Yeah, this is a bitter pill of swallow. You know, we've never raised taxes in quite a while. You know, what I have actually had some citizens pretty adamantly discussed with me, things like this park. I'm tired to drive the McKinney to practice my case. I'm paying premier taxes, giving me a premier park, you know. So you have to listen to those folks too. And again, I've been on council a long time. This water gravy jam in Rockwell ended very abruptly, very abruptly, and that's a serious issue. And several of the CIP projects related to water are absolutely critical. You know, whether it's increased storage, you know, drilling. And to not try to fully fund those now, because in these budgets, I believe is designed for storage tanks for ground, you know, raise storage tanks. I mean, we have to do this tough now. If we get a water source tomorrow for a build out, we still need to do this stuff. And I think as much as I hate to swallow that pill, I really think it's probably the best way to communicate to our constituents that we are taken this seriously and we are going to do everything we can to resolve it. So as much as I have some disdain, you know, when you go to the $100, you're talking point 0.01 or 0.02 cents difference in the two. But I don't want you to think that we don't consider that. Oh, it's just another tenth of a penny. Jay had mentioned to the devoted approval rate is neck and down on us. They are diminishing that, you know, our heart. And maybe they should. I don't know. But as being diminished, what we don't want to do is spend $20,000 to get a tax rate approved, I mean, that's not very efficient. So I think we have a lot of issues at this time. I hope we don't have to abandon the perspective that we say we had what we still had $70 million of growth this year. And that is a mix of residential and commercial. That's not bad. It doesn't sound too choked down to me as far as development. So I think we're really trying to do the right thing. And I guess the last time I'd like to mention her second that I've always respected is our staff you're right. It's not like the military. If you give them $100,000, they're going to spend it because they might not get it the next year. We do have a staff that really looks at that what they need and what they have and aren't dead set to burn the budget. That's how a lot of times we can move a few funds. The legal fees are very unfortunate, unfortunate. But a lot of these things that occur, oh, you have to enforce your laws. We may have some items come up pretty soon that could incur bar costs. And should that happen, hopefully we will look back and say, well, we already have four of you on one side, we don't want more four of these. So as much as I hate it, I think this is the best balance that we can do at this time, which certainly the hopes that we can continue to address these things and go back to our methodology of having growth pay for growth and citizens pay the taxes. If they did last year. I've been there. Very good. This kind of stuff. It's helping first, isn't it? I always like to have the last word. I didn't pull brothers here, remember? Remember shovel ready jobs? Obama talked about shovel ready jobs. So what Paul said and Brett said about looking at not a wish list, not a dream, but what we feel absolute needs are. We did this last year when Bertha was our city manager and she asked for stuff that was I'm so terrible at being totally correct. Carb-board shoes as opposed to leather shoes. And we told them, no, on three different things. And one of them was that open go. And that was a zillion dollars, wasn't it, Jay? And so what we're actually doing, that open go is $650,000. $650,000. So that we don't have paying people to dig through post it notes that somebody stuck in a corner 16 years ago. And it's sort of like, you ask your mom what she wants for Christmas, and she tells you something stupid like new shoelaces, and you know that there are things she would want, but she's not going to ask for it. And I think on some way, we need to help our staff in that, because they're used to running out of air bones. Now, I'm a lawyer. Don't spit at me. I feel that urge. My husband feels that urge. He hates words. The legal fees here, and I've only been on this council for a year. I was on planning his own with Tom and Bob for several years. The legal fees that we have incurred are part of being a kind of a pre-eminent place because you have people come in here, developers, who want to buy into this, but at shoebox prices where you the residents pay for everything. And we don't want that. And when we've passed ordinances, and I've worked so as our P and Z on drafting things to send a council to hone in on like not cutting down trees and following the rules. And if you're going to be a doormat, you're going to be a doormat forever. And if you roll over enough times, I can't think of anything appropriate to say right there. Sorry, it's the prosecutor history. You will be rolled down the mountain until you're in this swamp. And so yes, the legal fees were a lot of money, but I can tell you that we've negotiated with our law firms and the argument that someone may, and I appreciate you all coming. I love it when the citizens come because you learn. I've learned so much coming and sitting where you all are sitting before you. I'm planning is owning a learned a ton there and I'm learning more here. And a lot of it's very depressing to me because state law hinders us a lot. But there are, and I am a lawyer and have been for 42 years, and I know some of the city attorneys around here, and they couldn't handle some of the litigation we've handled. You have to farm it out to other people who specialize in certain areas of law. My daughter laughs all the time when people say, well, I've got my brother's lawyer. He's probably not a lawyer in the area that they need to be a lawyer. So it's a hollow argument. And so I'm not saying I'm opposed to not a voted tax rate, but I'm uncomfortable with this. And you guys know that I don't wanna tax rate it all because I'm very aware there seems to be a feeling among a lot of people in this town that $4,000 is nothing and it's not going to affect me one way or another. I voted against the geyser relief and I'm a geyser because I looked at a lot of the citizens here, take that deduction and then the young people who live here have to make up the difference. And that what what Rich just said about this park is if we just worry about the citizens who don't have that have emptiness then this town will die. So that park it's lot of money, and it was hard for me to swallow it. But I have brain kids who love coming to this town. They love the park out on Terry. They love the Christmas activities here, and they don't even live here. So I do think we have a mixed obligation. So I would like to do a backwards review. I'll come again. I don't have COVID now, so I'm ready to go. Hey, people accuse me of linking toilets. I get sick so much. I don't know what it is. So that's my two cents. Right. Thank you, Councilman. The one thing that I would say is that, and I think there's no reason to reiterate, I think everybody's made some very good points. The one thing that I would say though, in two, to the point of a backwards approach of project-based budgets, we've had four budget meetings. We've spent countless hours discussing this, dialoguing it, debating it, if you will. So, you know, we need a fishing government guys. So I would encourage all of us to consider what we've already discussed, and Councilman Caldwell, to your point, I do know that you were sick, and so there were some of those meetings that you did miss. So I do understand that. But for the other parties, guys, we have gone through this, could we have done a better job? Could staff walk us through a little bit differently? I think that we've given some of that feedback. But in general, we need to be a fishing government. We've got deadlines to meet. October 1st is publication. We're talking about the difference of what, between a flat tax rate, I believe, was the last discussions versus the, the de minimis tax rate is ultimately $20 a month per resident in a tape. So if it's the consensus of the body to go backwards and go back through the meetings and the countless hours in which got us here tonight, I'm happy to assist with my schedule, but to me it's not efficient use of all of our time. I think that we've heard from our police association. It's a massive line item in which he's point blank stating on which he has to have majority of that association even come out here and speak, that they already have major concerns with what's being proposed tonight with the Domenna's tax rate. Not to mention what Mr. Bishop said and what Mr. Dodson has said is that we do have legal expenses and we do have to protect the city. But we also have a very robust expense line item and at the detriment of roads, you know, you start looking at the roads. We have a aging road system that needs proper repair and to zero out a line item to offset is not proper planning in my opinion. So to that point, I will open the floor for motion. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion for approval of the proposed tax rate of 0.290311 per 100 assessed valuation assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment assessment I second the motion. Okay, Councilman Dodson seconds the motion as it stands the motion moves all those in favor say aye Those opposed aye Mayor I apologize for this vote we need a roll call vote Norma Very well at this time time we'll ignore a roll call vote. Councilman Krauss. Aye. Councilman Dodson. Aye. Councilman Weber. Aye. Mayor McCluref. Aye. Councilman Ruta. No. And Councilwoman, Kahlo. No. Very well. It passes. Thank you, Council. Appreciate all of the countless hours. And for those you have an audience, there have been so many meetings. We have spent a lot of time. And that is their commitment. And I do have to even be proud of the council members that even opted to say let's have another meeting. So that is a big moment even though we do disagree. I am very thankful that you're that passionate about making sure that we get it right. So very well moving into agenda item six dot V. This is a public hearing and discussion on the proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2024 and ending September 30th, 2025 Mr. Eris. This is just our review of the proposed budget. I'm just going to go over all of you of the budget, the major capital projects and the plan summary and budget challenges and opportunities and public and clothing next steps. The total budget for FY 25 is 68,789. 68,789,610. The budget period is from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025. Sorry. Sorry. The main objectives of this budget was provide essential services, upon a capital improvement projects specifically focused on water infrastructure. And the next objective was to maintain financial stability and transparency. What's included in this budget is a 7% total increase for public safety and 4% for non-safety staff. The new positions added you have the system construction storm water inspector, the plan examiner, administrative assistant, and the assistant city secretary. Also in this budget, we took into account the water and sewer increases. It's a pass of long, pass story expanded from the North Texas most of the water district to the city of Rockwell and they pass on their expenses to us with the 10% increase on water. The Buffalo and our shelter and the sanitary sewer expenses have increases due to increases in supplies as referred to in their report or budget report. These are the major capital infrastructure projects. Some of these have started in FY 24 with the continuation in FY 25. You have the public safety facility that currently in the process of trying to secure land for that. The public works facility, Brian Creed and Richard Dormire, they presented the plans for that. The city hall improvements are geared towards some changes that we're trying to do with IT is having a space for Danny and just reading some things in the community development department. Town center park that was also initiated this first year through that bond and and. We're actually in the process of. Finalizing that project with with the expenses for different items pertainingizing that project with with experiences for different items, pertaining to that project. The help of drive based number two, we're actually in the process of working on that. The city street improvements is something that is a pay as you go, just addressing street infrastructure here in the city of he, some of the part ward projects are the trails with Townsend Park, the territory, the stone lead to the Amy Park connection. Currently we're on the process is discussed earlier. We're still working on open go, finished the charter accounts, that's in process, we're actually in financials, currently and we're actually getting acclimated into the system so we're getting training and things of that nature. And eventually when we're fully operational, everything is up and running, which we're probably looking possibly on the first quarter of next year. You'll see all the new things that we're able to do with this is someone just barged transparency, putting information on the website, just for granted, and the finances of the city and things of that nature. The swag at meeting a management system is in the IT round specifically for managing the meetings, recordings and things of that nature and the push notification system which would actually, this is some of the views, just get those notifications out whenever there's a severe storm or disinformation that we need to get out to the public. The major water infrastructure projects, this is all included in the 10 year capital plan is the far from improvements starting with door states, which is currently under design, which will actually start that project and get it out for bid and construction in 2025. We also have the second phase of your AMI, meters of first phase. We were able to complete 3000 meters. That's what the base station, which captures the data from each one of those meters and post that data on the website or an app where you can actually see your water usage. So that's a huge, that's a big deal for the city, just to manage your water usage and just assist with water conservation efforts. We have the water and sewer and that fee update. That's for new development that comes on specifically residential as a fee that that paid for a major infrastructure projects that impact the city of keep. As discussed earlier, we have the water well number one that will be drilled here to now and the end of. No, not to real, it will actually be in just this actually design now, but. I think if I'm not mistaken, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan. Is it eight to 12 hours? Okay, give or take, okay, 8 to 12 months out and actually getting that that will drill. We also have the design for the 3 million gallons ground storage chain chain which would sit next to our existing ground storage shape at the city of Rockwell location where our pump station and Cougs is. And then we have elevated storage chain number three that we actually have in design, where by 25, and then you have a look with low pre centers or capacity. I didn't know that was a small. Okay. Thank you. What is it you're. It's a summary of all the. We're on and we've been playing with them. They have a 25, what is it? At the, where you see the beginning, one, that's where we're expected to start. I'll tell you the first, 2024. You have a breakdown on your governmental operating funds. That's your general funds and that's our response. This is what your property is actually going to be paid in related to the town center parkend Park and a couple of work buildings and public safety buildings. The enterprise funds are your water utility fund and your solid waste. And then your special revenue that's a path, the marketing trails of heat of the drainage fund, the fire station building fund, which is also going to be utilized for the construction of the public safety facility. You have a general equipment replacement find. We have, and the utility equipment replacement find, we actually have a schedule for replacing the equipment and vehicles that we refer to every year as well as we look at the needs of each department as far as what's needed in their area. This is where we pull the money from to cover those expenses. The tree preservation fund hasn't been utilized a lot, but it's for, just like the one is that water treatment preservation. The component units are your heat, economic development corporation, and your heat municipal benefit corporation. These, the H&B C corporation, and you can see their telephone balance was performance was significant and FYI, I'm giving them FY24 and they contributed $30 million to the construction of the public safety facility as well as their annual contribution to pay the debt on the park. So that was huge for us. And that's how we were able to maintain a low debt rate. What I didn't mention earlier is when we went into FY24, we didn't apply, well prior to FY24, we didn't apply the equivalent tax rate volume to the debt service rate, but we did that in F-24 to save citizens in F-24. So Councilor did excellent jobs and taken the initiative to make that act mentally safe cost in F-24. There's a total of all your revenues. That's a breakdown to discuss earlier. Total revenues budgeted for FY 25 is 32.8 million. Budget expenses is 35.9. So we will be using some fun balance to. to give the field figure. The financial policy requires that the water utility fund and the general fund maintain at least a 35% bond balance. So we are meeting that with, what's meaning for the post in the Applied Community Faculty. Okay, the public notification, public notifications. Now, August 29th in the Rockwell, Harold. And it was also published on the website on August 22nd. Today, we're just conducting the public hearing to get information, input from residents and property. The next steps is we'll open it up for public comments and put on the proposed budget. We'll take consideration of public input. If this City Council sees fit, they can propose potential amendments to the proposed budgets, Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh Any questions? No questions. So council councilman Colwell any questions from the sirs? No councilman Roosevelt. No questions from councilman No sir councilman we've heard Not no question councilman perhaps no well done back on item 6c. I didn't get a response to that our Resolution actually had 2024 on it not 2025. Is it changed? Okay. Sorry to go back. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Harris. All right. This time we will conduct the public hearing. So at 747, we will open public. Any residents that would like to speak for against this line item, 60? All right, it's 748. We'll close the public hearing. Council, do you have any other discussion items? The only thing I'd like to say is obviously for the residents and for this council, thank you guys for your hard work. Thank you to the staff, look forward meeting on the on the 24th. Glad to see some of these items that we've worked very diligently discussing, debating, benchmarking in other cities. So thank you council for even going on some tours. You guys will all as you saw, we have a 3 million gallon storage tank in design for this budget. We have a elevated storage tank being designed. We have a new water well and one of many to come. So exciting to see that push notifications. We saw in the severe weather that I learned very quickly as a newly elected individual, that we probably don't have the best way to communicate to our residents. So I was glad to see Suzanne jump in on this budget and make sure that we're pushing a new push notification system. The the additional items to open gob and this goes back to the council members that basically approved the OpenGo. The OpenGo ERP system is gonna be very nice, I'm gonna fully implement it. In fact, full transparency on our website for the CIP projects to actually see what's budgeted, for what, where they're at in their progress. Sometimes it's a little bit above a black veil. We don't know, hey, where's this project at? Where's that project at? You know, I get emails constantly just asking for updates. And so, kudos to those council members that were here that you guys brought that online. Previously, and glad to see that still in the budget to come do its final destination. So, and then obviously public works, the public works buildings highly needed. And for those of you that remember the water notice, our SCADA system sits in a closet and a house that unfortunately, somebody fell through the floor, I mean it's that old. So it's very needed in public safety to Mr. Serian, his great staff, those men and women in uniform. They really do make this town what we all love keeping us safe. And we've got a lot of growth going around us that unfortunately the other cities around us don't really agree with our comprehensive plan or care much about open space. And so we want to make sure that we protect our citizens and safety is a big part of what we all have come below. So with that, I'll yield the floor. Public hearing is closed. So at this time, I will tell everybody, obviously there's a lot in this meeting. So we're trying to get through it as quickly as possible, but there are also legal items that we need to discuss. There are some items that we're gonna discuss in private. So I do apologize and appreciate everybody's patience. But at this time, and we will break this up, so it will not follow this actual agenda setting to try to, try to, you know, make this go a little bit easier for everybody. But we are gonna go into executive session and are we prepared? There is no action on this side of life That's going to be on the 24th. So ultimately, are we prepared to Mr. Creed to go in the back room there so that citizens can stay in here in air condition? We are. All right. Thank you, Mr. Alabdor. So at this time, we will go into agenda item number seven. This is executive session in accordance with Texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter D the City Council will recess an executive session is a close meeting to discuss the following 7.A section 551.071 consultation with attorney on a matter in which the duty of the attorney to the government governmental body under the Texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct of the state bar of Texas clearly conflicts with this chapter regarding city manager search agreement with strategic government resources section seven dot c section 551 dot 07 for deliberation regarding the appointment evaluation reassignment duties discipline and dismissal of a public officer or employee regarding the city manager we are now an executive session session at 752. The council would join me in the private chambers. I'm going to be back. Somebody zoom in. I mean, we even say it. I'm here to speak to people saying they're so there are people doing it. I don't know why. Yeah, if you want to take them out there. Okay. Oh, I see a We're meeting. You're okay. The song is not told. You're receiving it. We're going to part for exempting sexual abuse. You guys with bare awareness. You're receiving it for example. You guys with bear witness. Go to the theater. I will try to make it. The positional. I know this is that this chair. They have. They have. They're here. So. For the. The. The. The. The. The. There was a lot of bulls. There were some onables five minutes before the meeting. So are we on? Okay, if we're on and the doors are open, then we are we're open. Okay, if we're on and the doors are open, then we are we're open. Okay, very well. Dores are open. There's Right nine dot a Yes, of course Very well at eight twenty nine I'm going to go to the next item. Very well, at 829, we will reconvene into open session and accordance with the Texas government code chapter 551, the city council will reconvene into regular session to consider action. If any, on matters discussed in executive session, agenda item 9 is an additional items for discussion. Nine.A is a discussion and action on a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement for the executive recruitment services for the position of city manager with the firm's strategic government resources, Inc, SGR, and short. Are there any items of discussion council members? Okay, at this time, the chair will open the floor for a motion. I'll make a motion to approve agenda item 9a. Okay, there's a motion on the floor to approve agenda 9a and that is the resolution authorized city manager to execute an agreement with the executive recruitment services for the position of city manager with the firm's strategic government resources. Do we have a second? A second. We have a second by Councilman Dodson. Very well. The motion moves all of those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed. Look at passes unanimously. Does it matter that it says Amy stand for city attorney? I'm Was a question. It has Amy's name. It has Amy's name here. I guess I guess we'll clean that up. City attorney. City attorney. Marie city. Oh. Okay. Yeah. She can't. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. At this time, we're going to go into agenda item six, discussion in action regarding the public hearing and an ordinance for the water conservation plan, Mr. Creed. That item is still not ready. Okay. We have been there in the Jimmy Scott table. This is the date. Okay. If you want to just to know where it is, bring it back. Right. That would be great. Okay. At this time, the chair will open the floor, we're emotion. We just thought. Yeah, there's no more. Okay, so the motion is to take no action. Second, sir. Yes. I'll just bring it back when we get the reviews done. Very well. So we are taking no action essentially tabling this item for a later date. And then now we are going to need to go back into executive session, unfortunately. So for the residents, I'm so sorry. Thank you for your patience. So we have a number of items to just make sure that we address before we go into these additional items. So in accordance with the Texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter D the City Council will recess an executive session. This is a closed meeting to discuss the following 7.A section 551.071 consultation with the attorney on a matter in which the duty of the attorney to the governmental body under the Texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct of the state bar of Texas clearly conflicts with this chapter regarding zoning and plating standards local government code shot clock and trilogy final plat trilogy development and Maclinichism city limits and extraterritorial jurisdiction subdivision regulation and comprehensive plan and zoning case Zh202401 and zoning case za2020403 as well as deliberate the purchase exchange lease or value of real property regarding future land purchase for the Department of Public Safety Facility. At this time, we are an executive session at A32. My guess was 10 third. Yeah, are we good? Yeah, that's right. All right, very well. We will reconvene into open session and accordance to the Texas Government Code chapter 551. The City Council will reconvene into open session and accordance to the Texas government code chapter 551. The City Council will reconvene into regular session to consider action. If any on matters discussed in executive session at 1104. All right. Moving into agenda item 6.f case number ZA202403 conduct a public hearing and act on an ordinance changing the zoning designation for agricultural district to SF 43 single family residential district on 158.613 acres of property located in the northeast corner of the intersection of FM 740 Ridge Road and Heathland crossing adjacent to White Road and further described as abstract 207 East Teal Survey, track 55 City of Heathropwell County and Miss Adil. Thank you. In the interest of time given the late hour, I'm going to give you the option of getting the full presentation that I've prepared or I could distribute a few responses to public notice that we received today. I'm going to hand those to Councilman Krauss to the table. We would knowing that we've tabled this. And this is a continuation of the public hearing that we had at the last meeting. That's correct. So you just need to reopen the public hearing and receive comment. And it to be completely transparent, these are all the same slides that you saw at the last meeting. So I think I might just begin by asking if there are questions that you might have based on what you remember from last time or any new information that you might have very well. I don't have any questions for staff council. Do you have any questions? No questions very well. No questions. Thank you. Yep. We're just waiting on these documents. At this time we'll go ahead and open our public hearing for case numbers ZA202403 11 of six. We are open for our public hearing. There's any residents that would like to speak for against the sabbriket? Mike McClard, the 17 Blue Heron, and I'll get more than three minutes if I need to talk. After three hours and 20 minutes of executive session. I feel very disrespected to have moved this item of which 20 some members of your community, your voters were here. And to go into three hours and 20 minutes of executive session, that's disrespectful. So what I wanted to get across on this, because I know that you are obviously trying to find some way you're afraid of litigation. But I'm going to remind you that we went into litigation against Laura Miller of Dallas who tried to take 758 acres and put, oh, I think it was 7,500 homes to where she would get the city tax and turn around and send the ISD over to Rockwell. There are times in which we need to fight and it's worth the fight. I'm not so sure that you're fighting for us. I honestly am not. We elect to represent and represent Heath and the homeowners and the voters here. But I don't feel like I'm being represented. I think individuals are looking for the easy way out and scared of litigation. I'm not. That's why I'm still here. Some things were brought up tonight. So we look at the the Rockwell County 2050 point. One of the things that really resonated with me was the desirable development. That was one of their key words in green spaces. That's their initiative. That's their marching order, right? I don't see any way shape or form that we're looking at this and going, this is our desirable development. I think we're looking at it as, well, it's better than Brian Barry's 56 acres of apartments granted. Right? So are we, are we, are we conceding to well, it's better than? Or are you doing what is, what the community wants, what's best, what's desirable for heath. That's the part I'm trying to understand because I'm not getting the feeling that individuals really are taking that to heart. We're looking at 3,200 square feet is the minimum and I'm going to tell you right now with toll brothers that's their minimum That's what was on the plan. The average home in my community is about 1.6 million probably a little over 5,000 square feet. Keith on crossing, much the same way. We sat there and we just approved the final plat, out of 184 acres and a 42 acre. it came out to around 1.7 acres per lot. We look at what they've come back and they've told us it's their way or the highway. And when that plan development only had 9% of green space, well, okay, we have 33% we gave up. You know, if you put that in perspective, the ones that just got approved were much the same. That's only the green space argument. The thing that I would like y'all to understand is there is no way that they're going to get $500 a square foot on a spec built home. So what does that mean? That means that they're they're coming to us saying oh well we're talking 1.6 million dollar homes right? I've heard that in Planning and Zoning I've heard of the City Council from them. No it's not. They are going to put in whatever homes sell the fastest. 6,000 versus 3,200, what do you think sells the fastest? 3,200. And I'll bet you at least half of them will be between 3,400 and 3,600. What does that mean? That means a house that's going to be around 800,900,000. What's the average home in Heathland Crossing? Probably about 1.3, 1.5. So now you're going to financially impact our resale value on our homes that we've invested in. But they want to sit there and compare to, oh, let's look at Shepard's Glen that was built in the early 1980s. Let's look at what we're putting in today. Let's look at who we're impacting. So you're going to squeeze the balloon on them to pull in that tax revenue, right? But in turn, you're going to hurt your voters over here in Shepard's Highlands, Heathland Crossing. That's not a win-win. So if I do the numbers of what we just approved over here off McDonald road, that would be 88 homes would be consistent with the amount of green space that they put in there. That would be 88 homes as far as what would go on the Perry property. They're at 115. You might understand it as they try to capitulate a little bit, but then went right back to the original plan. I just, it really concerns me that I think some of you don't have the history of what Heath has had to go through, and Sharon brought it up eloquently. You hit that slippery slope, you give them an inch, and now they're gonna push you down that hill. We don't want what happened to 40. We don't want what happened to fate. My God, they're building, build the rent communities there. And I don't know if y'all are familiar with that, but that is a horrible situation to have. Linda Lyne, I mean, we dealt with what's the situation there on the North Travis Ranch, it does. And now we have the trilogy that's going to impact us from an ISD perspective, right? But it's going to be right on our doorstep. Why are we inviting less than what is desirable here? And I know you sit there and say, oh, well, you know, legal, you're so concerned about legal, Scott, I'm not. We spent money we didn't have to fight Laura Miller and we won. And what's right is what's right and what the people speak and support is right. And I know that you have a super majority in which to have to come to and order to pass this. But your people are telling you what they want to. And so I did the submission for my community because I do. I am a co-owner in that land. But because I'm not within a 200 foot ordinance of notification, you didn't want to hear the voice. You didn't want it on record. I put it on record. I handed that to Kevin Lashar and that's what you see. So that's property ID 47207. So my voice and the less somebody wants to to negate my voice, that represents that property. So now for my understanding that should be 60 properties with 13 in favor and 31 against. So I just want to make sure that's on the record. It just, it pains me to come here time after time and sit here and feel like it's groundhog day. But I'll do that each and every time. But when I ask my family, my neighbors, do you realize how embarrassing that would be? Then come here and then be forgotten for three and a half hours? Does this sit there? Because I assure you, if you had to only discuss the all-in items that were in executive session, it didn't take three and a half hours. I have a feeling that you did a de facto closed session without notification to public. And items were discussed outside of the realm of the executive that was put in here, which gave no understanding to the public of how long that was going to take. I've been here till well after 11 in planning and zoning means, but I'll do what it takes. But we hired you all to represent and to fight for us. Now fight. Thank you. I'm going to add on to it. Our neighbor here on Brad Larson's name. My best of ancient for the Brad and the state. I sure will. Mr. Mayor council. Brad Larson 2000 Kings pass. I moved to Rockwell with my family in 1968. This whole county was 3,000 population and we are vested in this county. We had been for many years. We've been a pillar, we've put money into it and we are here today. We're not going anywhere. I'm not afraid of lawsuits, Mr. Mayor. I'm in lawsuits all the time with my businesses. I have a PR company on retainer right now that I can have out there on this property with with TV channels and X an X a reporter and say how the total brothers are trying to cram something down our throat that we don't want, that we don't want. Does anybody know about the total brothers? They're a publicly traded company. Their stock today was $140 a share. Does anybody own any total brother stock? Anybody? I don't. Their stock last year at this time was $68 a share. They are a $14 billion company capitalization to compare that American Airlines is $7 billion. Okay? So they're powerful. They have attorneys. They can sit here and push us and do whatever they want to do But we can beat them. I'm not afraid of having my personal PR people be out here. I paid them They're on retainer. I need to spend the money. I'll do it We own 10 acres in Sunnyvale on Trip Road for 30 years and we dealt with all of what you're dealing with They threatened they did sue us. They sued Sunnyvale on Trip Road for 30 years. And we dealt with all of what you're dealing with. They threatened, they did sue us. They sued Sunnyvale. They, uh, uh, and we fought back. They never won. Look at Sunnyvale today. Where did those developers go? 40. That's where they went. So you don't have any apartment buildings. You have no high density housing, but I'm aware of in central Sunnyvale and the core of Sunnyvale. This property, if you look at it on your Rockwall CAD map, is right in the center of the heart of Heath. Do any of you council members know in the last, how long the Perry family is on this property? Any of you looked? They've owned it since 1999. Do you how much they paid in taxes? Annual per year, approximately since 1999? Anybody know that? What they pay? $60 a year. So they haven't paid what we have paid for the right for us to stand here and talk. You know what my taxes are on my house this year? I can tell you right now. And that's with my exemptions because thanks to our governor, he allowed it not to go up too high per year. So this year I'm going to pay $18,977 in taxes on my house. Which is more this year than the family has paid on that property in 25 years. So we have a right to say, we have a right to speak our voice. We have a right to say this. The, anybody know who the number one owner of stock and told brothers is? Have you researched that? It's black rock. Number two is Vanguard. If you don't know who black rock is, you need to do some research on black rock. So if you this property screams plan development where you have control over what happens there. If you blanket zoning this to flat residential, they'll come back and they'll beat you to death and they'll get what he just talked about. They will get that 3200 square foot home. There's what they'll get. And they'll get their lot size down too. You won't get your one acre lot. You won't get your open spaces. You won't get your trails. I walked behind your house, Mr. Mayor. You have beautiful walking trails behind all that area back there. I walked it yesterday because I wanted to kind of really see it. So my wife, we both of us went back there and walked all of it. We walked behind the property, walked behind your big trails behind your house. So I think this property has to be developed properly. I want the parries to get the maximum amount of money for this property. I want them to sell it. We know it's not gonna be cattle there for the next 20 years. We know it's gonna be developed. But what we want for this city is a smart development. We want it to be done in a smart way and you have to control it. And the only way you can control it is through zoning and plan development. So the only way you can do it. And you have to have control of that development. And if not, I think you lose what heath is. In my opinion, you've already lost some of it. I think the Tom Thumb Shopping Center development looks like something out of Mesquite, Box Springs or Fony. Doesn't look like something out of areas where my friends live, such as South Lake, Island Park, Northern areas in Frisco, Salina, other beautiful areas which heath could be just like those. But if you allow this top of development, you lose it. And this is a really key piece of property. So beautiful piece of property, it's key to the city. So I encourage you to deny this application. I encourage you to go back to the table and make them plan something that is if we if we if you do the zoning for this group, make sure that it's something that we can all agree upon because you've said what you want. The Rockwall County fabulous. It was all in there of what we want. I don't have to reiterate all the things that we want, but it's all there. So you have to go back and go back to the table, the drawing board, and get them to do what we want. We will find, I'm not afraid of lawsuit. You know, the, we're taxpayers, taxpayers look at we're paying taxes here. We paid far more taxes than they'd ever paid in that property. So they're going to have a windfall. They'll sell it for three times with the current assessed value is which is probably in the $5 million range. I have it here somewhere. It is a pernossess value is five million nine hundred and forty seven thousand dollars are going to pay sixty dollars and twelve cents in tax on that on this property this year. Okay, so what we've done and he's exactly right. We've given these owners of this property years of sitting there with a tax holiday and when they sell it they're gonna get a windfall at our expense because it's a very great property for the toll brothers because of everything that's around it. Everybody's gonna want to live there. They're gonna want to buy 800 thousand dollar house when you got two million dollar houses all around it And then we get into all the impact for the city. We know that So you we we've discussed this before about number of people in the home and the impact on school systems fire safety That's a big issue. We haven't even gone into the water issues. That's a whole other issue. I won't spend time on that, but my feeling is We have the infrastructure before we build it is our Responsibility to make sure our infrastructure is built for our community. It's our responsibility Heath is us. We're Heath It's you. It's me. It's everybody. It's our police officers. It's heath is us. So we have a responsibility to make sure this community is what we want. And we can't lay down. And if we, if they threaten to sue us, let them threaten, let them threaten all they want. I'll fight it. I'll be the first one here with my PR company and we will, they will not want a bad PR for this publicly traded company because the first they're going to say is this big company is trying to cram something down the citizens of he's Texas. It will not be good PR for them. I don't think that that's something they want to tackle. So, and we will all fight in. And yes, the folks that left tonight, the neighbors, their comment to me was Brad, people honest. It's the only thing they said to me. So with that, I conclude, and I hope you deny this application. Thank you. Are there any other. Are there any other residents that are like to speak for against? Very well. At 11.26 we will call close the public hearing. Oh, well, we don't want to close the public hearing. Oh, we don't want to close the public hearing. Okay. So we will continue the public hearing at 1126. Um. And obviously we'll be going into the next case. I do want to say something. Is I think it's important that it's addressed. I'm sorry that anyone would ever feel disrespected. And that comes from the bottom of my heart. I think that it's important to understand that the three hours is very much a displacement for any other residents and anybody that left. But the three hours that we spend here, we spent six items that are four of which are legal, like current legal items. It takes a lot of time to discuss the gravity of where they are and what's going on with our city and what's going on with our legal council. And there's also seven individuals up here that all actually dramatically agree, but also have variations of that agreement. And we have to discuss that. So please don't ever take that as us being disrespectful. We had a crampack agenda and we were trying to look at how can we fit everything in and do it responsibly because we have some very heavy gravity of things that are going on here in the heat and we don't take it lightly. So the way I view it is is that the three hours that we were in here, we were highly debating and talking through and seeking the proper counsel that's needed to make the right types of decisions. So again, I humbly apologize if anyone feels disrespected. And I'm very sorry that there are individuals that were here and they were patiently waiting. And I've been in the audience and I've had to leave an executive session and stood out there for two hours and sweat and then just decided to leave. So I understand that. I also want to ensure that we understand the difference between the counties 2050 and 2050 plan in the city. We have a comprehensive plan. And we are elected officials that are essentially required to observe the comprehensive plan for the greater good and the greater planning and observe our legal requirements and our ordinances And so as it pertains to the county the county does not have a comprehensive plan So anything that they were discussing they're talking about from a county level and and I have been Personally involved and I know councilman Weaver has in a lot of different meetings to make sure that he has a voice because we're very distinctly different than other cities in our county and I too share your concerns and I have wanted and Councilman Weaver and I both have wanted to make sure that our comprehensive plan and our vision of he is part of that overall strategy and that overall plan. So I just want to make sure that the county portion of tonight's agenda was a macro level of communication and strategy. And then collaboration with our other city mayors, I've worked in numerous sessions with the Rockwell mayor and even the McClendon Chisholm mayor, as precinct three is 50% undeveloped. and I too share your concerns about what surrounds us. And so one of the items in which we did have to discuss tonight is about the public safety facility as it pertains to our concerns to public safety in general as it pertains to over development in and around us. So just so you guys understand the gravity in which we're discussing these things is laborious. And so please understand no disrespect wanted and to the point of being scared of legal. I've already said it and I think I can, and I think we have consensus on the bench. We're not scared of legal. It's not what we're talking about. At any given point, no one here has said, oh gosh, we should fear a developer. What we have stated is at a macro level on consensus is that we have to observe our legal requirements in managing our ordinances and applying our ordinances and our comprehensive plan as it pertains to this item, we specifically in this public hearing, we were addressing a straight zoning application. It's very important that we are distinctly different than what we're about to discuss in a PD. To the point of the last public speaker, it is very important that a plan development is absolutely where you have that flexibility, right? And they've withdrawn that application, okay? There's where it lies, the complexity of what we're discussing. Because now it's a situation to where they're talking about a specific application, no plan, will follow your ordinances and we're trying to understand what it is that is inside of our comprehensive plan and our ordinances and how all of that applies to that specific case. Does that make sense? And that's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot to get with the council. It's a lot to get with seven Like-minded individuals but differing opinions on certain elements And so it's there's a lot of gravity and then I'll end on this point to the point that That two of us live in the neighborhood right behind it. So I assure you that every second of every minute and which I talk about this I have to represent the city about this, I have to represent the city as a whole. I have to represent the 200 people, or 200 of foot rules, but trust me, I'm listening to every single thing that you've done. I've spent countless hours doing my own research to understand the builder, to understand what's going on, but also to understand our legal obligations, our legal requirements, and then what our statutes are, and what our hope for our city is. So I just wanted to hopefully give a little bit more clarity to how much I do appreciate you guys getting up here time and time again and standing up there. And I too also understand the history of this property because there's a few council members on this bench that I do or not for that I had a digital marketing agency that created materials for them that we had we had get together and tried to raise money to to fight developers trying to come in and not comply with what we see as the vision and the comprehensive plan and our ordinances. So again, I just wanted to clarify some of our stands as a body as a whole. Okay. With that council, do you guys have any discussion that you would like to make or we can open the floor for a motion? If there's no discussion, the Councilman Weaver. Yeah, I'll make a few comments Thank you guys for staying. Yes, thank you and and You know we apologize for the late night and and this repeated groundhog day effort It's getting all it's it's it's getting kind of ridiculous But thank you for staying and thank you for getting up here and speaking. I think you guys both spoke to the point. Made the points very well. It's the same points we've been, not we, but the public and the PNC has been echoing for four to five meetings now. And so my comment would be that you have to fight for what's important. You have to fight for what we want. And I too am not fearful of lawsuits. It's almost become common practice in the development realm. As I've set on this bench for eight years, we get threats all the time. Sometimes those threats come to fruition. Sometimes they don't. But either way, we as representatives of you have the responsibility to stand up for you. And so you know, I will. Very good. Thank you, Councilman. We were I appreciate that. And I echo that. So if there are Councilman called a little one quick thing. I've only been on council a year, but I've been coming to these meetings just like you'll have. And I have to say with regard to the year, but I've been coming to these meetings just like y'all have. And I have to say, with regard to the people you're looking at, nobody would pull a stunt while we're killing time and making you wait so you would go home. It's not who you're looking at. So I can promise you from the bottom of my heart and I'm a serial truth. We were absolutely doing very complex discussions and planning and I'm an attorney and everybody hates an attorney and I get it. And I'm not the kind of attorney that does this kind of stuff. I'm a prosecutor. So a lot of the stuff that developers do makes me white hot mad and I'm not the best person to speak, but I can promise you as citizens your number one. Very good. Thank you, Councilman. Are there any others that would like to speak? Very well. At this time, the chair will open the floor to entertain a motion. Motion to table the zoning case, ZA202401 to October 8, 2003. We're on six F. I'm sorry. F. It's at E on the screen. It's wrong. Okay. Motion table zoning case, ZA202403 and continue the public hearing to October 8, 2024 at 630 PM. Very well. We have a motion on the floor to continue this public hearing and table this item to the October 8 city council meeting. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, we have a second from Councilman Dodson. So the motion moves. All of those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed. Aye. Okay. Councilman Weaver is opposed. It passes. Moving into agenda item six dot C case number ZA 22401 consider an act on an ordinance changing the zoning designation from agricultural district to PDSF plan development for SF 43 single family residential uses on the 158.613 acres of properly located at the northeast corner of the intersection of FM 740 Ridge Road, people crossing adjacent to White Road further described disaster, abstract 207 East Tills Survey, track 55 City of Heath, Miss Adelaide. Thank you Mayor and Council. This obviously is the PD version of this concept for this property. This application originally included two concept plans. One was what was been termed the half-acre concept and then that item that concept was denied by the council. So the remaining concept connected to this application is this PDSF 43 or the one-haker concept plan. And I will be happy to answer any questions that you might have based on the material in your packet. I do have slides if you would like to see any. Yes, I have slides. Correct. It is. Very well. Thank you, Mr. Delt. Any questions for staff by the council? If we don't have any questions, this this time, the chair will open the floor for motion. Make a motion to table zoning case, ZA2024001 as stated for October 8th Do we have a second also? Okay, we have a second my councilman called well So the motion moves All of those in favor say aye aye those opposed aye Councilman Weber is in opposition at passes very well. At this time, at this time due to September 11th and the observance of this date and the effects that it had on so many families and so many lives, we would like to take a moment of silence and observing 9-11. So if you would, just bow your heads as we take a moment of observance. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. Thank you all for taking that moment of silence and honoring those that we lost in this great country. So at 9, or no, at 11.40, this meeting is adjourned. Whoa. Yeah. Almost made it to midnight. Not really. Yeah. Yeah. We can go up. Fine.