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2025 04 15 CC Minutes SpecialMINUTES OF THE SPECIAL MEETING OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF BAYTOWN April 15, 2025 The City Council of the City of Baytown, Texas, met in a Special Meeting on Thursday, April 15, 2025, at 3:30 P.M. in the Baytown Fire Training Field, Room B at 7022 Bayway Drive, Baytown, Texas, with the following in attendance: Jacob Powell Mayor Pro Tem Laura Alvarado Council Member Sarah Graham Council Member Kenrick Griffith Council Member Mike Lester Council Member Charles Johnson Mayor Jason Reynolds City Manager Scott Lemond City Attorney Angela Jackson City Clerk John Stringer Sergeant at Arms Mayor Charles Johnson convened the April 15, 2025 Special City Council Meeting with a quorum present at 3:45 P.M. All members were present with the exception of Council Member James Franco. 1. CITIZEN COMMENTS Mayor Charles Johnson announced a citizen signed up to speak. Don Aikey 410 Rollingwood Rd. stated, "From what I understand, the main thing is the topics. At these meetings you have Finance. I think before you all spend the penny, everybody ought to get together and set your priorities straight. For some, priorities to be number one, and in my opinion, that would be people's health and safety. Some priorities ought to be number two. Is it legal or illegal what you're doing, because from what I've seen of the City for the last three years, health and safety doesn't come anywhere near the top. State law, if it's convenient you'll follow it. If it's not, who cares? Well, let me tell you the citizens care and we notice it. We care more about it when we talk about it and we see what we consider not right things done. I just say you've got to spend money where it's needed. I mean, it's nice to build a stairway to heaven. Even though we've never done it, we don't know anything about it." 2. DISCUSSIONS a. Discussion of City Policy Topics: 1. Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2026 2. Updates on City Projects 3. City Operational Reporting City Council Special Meeting Minutes April 15, 2025 Page 2 of 6 City Manager Jason Reynolds provided a presentation regarding Items 2.a., 1.,2., and 3., pertaining to the City Policies by stating, "Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Overall, today, those three topics are kind of summarized as the talking points that we will go over. The General Obligation (GO) Bond for 2025 or 2026, service delivery changes in 2025 and 2026 and additional direction on the tax rate as we build out the budget for fiscal year 26. To kick off with the GO Bond, there are a few things that we need to understand to actually have a good discussion around this. First, we need to understand our historical philosophy when it comes to debt. We need to look at where we are now. We need to make a decision and then Council will understand the next steps around all of this. How we got here; over the past few years, for the past decade plus maybe, the City of Baytown has used Certificate of Obligations (CO) for all of our debt practices. Upon my arrival, there was a lot of conversation around should we move and do we need to move for GO Bonds only. A lot of that driving force was a philosophical stance from some of the City Council Members and recommendations from the Finance Committee and future planning around what the State was doing at the time. It was like do we need to go ahead and get in front of what's happening with the State so that we are not going to be hamstrung when the State actually says you can't use CO's anymore for our debt insurant. In 2024 we made the decision that we will start using GO bonds as the primary aspect for debt. When we made that decision we said, we still have to finalize some of our debt pieces with CO's, which will be primarily water and sewer that are driven with CO's. That agrees with what the State is trying to work on as well. There will be one more CO that would be issued in fiscal year 25. Then we would plan on our first GO bond being in November of 2025, which is fiscal year 26. That was the overall plan for where we are now. Once we got to the retreat in February, we then had conversations around the overall debt of what our Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) piece looked like. That was we have to address roughly $500 million in infrastruc- ture over the next 10, 15 years. We looked at different scenarios and what does that look like. We were like, hey this is all playing out. Let's give direction. Let's create the Bond Committee. We ended up selecting roughly $200 million. Let's get our $200 million and then the Bond Committee will help push that down to maybe $100 to $150 million. Then we'll make a final recommendation on that before we call for the vote in November. We felt okay with that around January, February of this year and a lot of different parameters started coming into play. A lot of conversations came into play, and then it was that we created a Bond Committee. Do we also need to have a follow- up discussion on if we actually need to have this GO bond in November of 2025? That is currently where we are now. Those conversations have led us to this point of understanding what we need to look at when it comes to considerations on if we stay the course of having the bond election in November of 2025 or if we move it to the bond year November of 2026. If we stay with November 2025 as the bond issuance, we have to look at the risk that's associated with that. Both on the yes and the no. The biggest risk that you have in front of you right now is going to be that we have the Crime Control Prevention District (CCPD) and the Fire Control Boards are up for renewal in No- vember of 2025 this year as well. Some of the comments that I've received are that's not a big deal. The citizens really get behind those tasks. Well, that's not necessarily the case. The last CCPD one, did fail. There was a change with that, where it went to, I think they were trying to extend the terms on that. I don't think that's what the citizens appreciated was the longer term of CCPD. It came back shortly after and it did with the standard renewal timeframe that it had before. Both of those roughly hold about $5 million in cost or expenses that both the Police Department (PD) and Fire Department (FD) use for operations. If those fail, should the ballot piece be something that is contending with? By law everything will be written and everything will be looked at as a tax rate increase, even though both CCPD and Fire Control are already there. How it technically works is that since they will expire, they will no longer be there. If it's voted back, you're voting back a tax City Council Special Meeting Minutes April 15, 2025 Page 3 of 6 rate increase even though it's the status quo of what it was before. That's a risk factor and the piece of that is what do you do with the $5 million of expenses that are in there? Do we not move forward with those, or does the General Fund (GF) have to recover those? That's one expense item that we have to consider. If we put the projects on and it doesn't pass, the State law currently says you are not able to use debts, CO's or other tax notes for three years on those projects that are identified in the bond list. There is current legislation in the State right now that's going to change that three- year target to five years and it is likely to pass. It has already passed the Senate at this point. It's in the House now and it is expected to pass. That three to five years is what the current legislation is and five years is most likely what's going to be in the next month. The other piece is that we will still move forward with Fire Station Two as part of the CO issuance in the spring -summer of this year in an effort to keep that going and not be in a risk factor with the bond issuance itself. If we say no, the Bond Committee that was created would have more time. They would still be at play and they could still be utilized for more education and more outreach. They would have about a year or so to really talk to the citizens about all the bond projects and get a little more education with the community. Really move forward with what their charge currently is. If we also say no, the City's GO bond would be on the Goose Creek Consolidated ISD GO bond in 2026. They were going to do that this year and they heard the City was going to do a GO bond in 2025, so they pushed theirs until 2026. Ours would be on the same timeframe with Goose Creek ISD. If you also say no, we do need to look at some of the things that are on the GO bond that may need to be pushed forward with the CO of the Fire Station that Public Works could address with some of the streets and some of the drainage that possibly needs to be addressed in 2026. Before we jump into questions, I want to look at one more slide that has to do with the School bond election results in Texas. What's interesting to see here is that pre-COVID, passage rate was above 70% for all bonds in the State of Texas. These are school bond election results only. This has nothing to do with municipal bonds. In May or November of 2020, things shifted a little bit. As you can tell, May passage rates stayed fairly normalized compared to the other ones pre-COVID. In November, pas- sage rates dropped significantly. I'm not going to speculate on what was happening at the time. I will tell you that the numbers, these propositions that were put forward increased a lot. As you can see that up here, the propositions actually increased quite a bit. This is a consideration point that we have to look at when it comes to understanding if our bond was going to be put with the School Board's bond in 2026. This report was paid for by the school and was shared with me. If we want to pay for somebody to provide this report to us, we can pay somebody, but I was conserving resources right now." (Exhibit A and B) Council Members provided feedback from their Districts and recommendations for projects being presented on the GO Bond list. The City Council wanted to reiterate the importance of identifying and prioritizing needs and not wants to this GO Bond. Concerns for CCPD and FCPEMSD in the November's election will be something to consider and informing citizens that CCPD is funded by sales tax and not property taxes. Mayor Charles Johnson clarified the citizens requested transparency and the creation of the Bond Committee is to accommodate that request for the citizens. To ensure the community has a say in projects and doesn't feel pressured into any decisions. Fire Department Chief Dobson clarified, "It is primarily for vehicle emergency vehicle replace- ment. It's for fire engines and ambulances primarily. We do occasionally work on high-water ve- hicles and other things and there's some other capital items that we purchase. Primarily, it's a City Council Special Meeting Minutes April 15, 2025 Page 4 of 6 replacement cycle so that we don't have to go to the Council or the General Fund for million -dollar hits each year. We buy an ambulance pretty much every year. They're about $380,000 or so. Then a fire truck is probably every 2 to 3 years and it just depends. There is 3 year wait on the fire trucks and 2 years on ambulance. It's taken longer to order one then getting it. Our cycle has been working pretty good so far. Over the last few years we've been able to, get it to where we cut out recurring costs within fire control to just buy capital things like the trucks. Our cycle's going pretty well. We do our future trucks in and out a little bit to make sure that the funds are going to be there. In the last five years we've purchased an ambulance every single year. When we buy one, the oldest one goes into reserves and the oldest reserve ambulance gets auctioned off. Right now, we're doing pretty good with just using that recent pickup and replacement method." Police Department Chief Stringer clarified, "We're allowed to purchase capital items and also fund crime prevention and reduction programs. Capital items that we purchase are marked vehicles, as well as some of our unmarked vehicles. All of the Police Department's marked vehicles are coming out of the CCPD at this time. For a while, we were able to order about 20 to 22 vehicles at a time with every series, which meant that every 5 years our fleet was on track to be replaced. We're not able to do that anymore because we've had to shift costs from CCPD, which means now we're down to 16 vehicles that we ordered and we're looking at probably about 12 marked vehicles that we're going to order. In addition, we're replacing a very large fleet of unmarked vehicles. Some of those have not been replaced well over the lifespan of those vehicles. Our technologies that are being funded out of there include things like funding our digital forensics. Digital forensics is the new DNA for prosecution. As soon as we get a case that we take to the Department of Affairs (DA) office and we are presenting a murder case or aggravated assault, the very first thing that they're asking for is not do you have DNA evidence, but do you have digital forensic evidence? Do you have cell phone downloads? Do you have computers? Do you have GPS tracking from cars? That sort of thing, we have our own stand-alone Digital Forensics Unit (DFU). We have a very nice spare day room, which protects all the technologies in it so that it can't be impacted from outside transmissions and we don't lose that evidence. It's also enhanced information systems. Axon, which is our body -worn cameras, our cameras inside the vehicles, which are all part of our racial profiling laws that we're required to have now. It's all funded through there. There's an en- hanced information sharing system involved with all of these elements, including Axon. Axon at evidence.com, has unlimited cloud -based storage that we can put all of our digital evidence. All of our printed evidence inside that cloud. It also allows us to share it via a link with other agencies that we're working in Congress on with joint investigations. But we can also send it to the District Attorney's office, depending on Harris County or Chambers County and they can begin to review that evidence immediately. It also includes our Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR), the Flock Safety Technology, which is also in there. Tasers arc a part of the Axon program too. All those things are in there, but there's multiple software systems for our digital printing machines. That's important to us and the citizens, not just because we're able to do it on our own, but that's what helps us get prosecutions and keep bad guys in jail." City Manager Jason Reynolds to inform City Council Members of the timeline correction for the Bond Committee as listed: Timeline March — July: Bond Committee review and selection August — Bond Called City Council Special Meeting Minutes April 15, 2025 Page 5 of 6 November — Outreach of Bond The City Council Members emphasized their concerns for having the City of Baytown GO Bond on the same year as the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District (GCCISD) Bond. They feel they are behind in the process for the 2025 Bond process. The Council Members will take the recommendation of the Bond Committee under great consideration in their decisions mov- ing forward. Public Works and Engineering Director Frank Simoneaux provided clarification regarding Garth Road Project Budgets Funding and the expectation that funding would span out for a 3 to 5 year range. City Manager Jason Reynolds continued his presentation, referring back to Exhibit A. • Bond Committee continuation (education and outreach material) • Service Delivery Changes City Manager Jason Reynolds received guidance from City Council Members to have the Bond Committee move forward with discussions of a GO Bond. Public Affairs Director Thomas Reeves, informed City Council Members of Halff Consulting Ser- vices and their continuation to assist with the Bond process and the Public Affairs Staff will pro- vide the required pieces to the Bond Committee for community education purposes. Mayor Charles Johnson announced at the 4:53 P.M. City Council Members would take a twenty - minute recess. Mayor Charles Johnson reconvene the meeting at 5:23 PM. Assistant City Manager Carol Flynt provided an overview regarding Item 2.a.,1., Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2026. • Health Department: Community Clean Up Events, eliminated a full-time veteri- nary position and eliminated a clean team crew. • Library: Service hours changed and discontinued homebound services. • Parks and Recreation: Restructured community programs and events. • Planning and Development: Reduced substandard demolition. • Public Affairs: Realigning the grant programs, removed public art from GF and removed federal lobbyist for the year and state -funded lobbying. • Public Works: Eliminated a sidewalk crew and amended the sanitation budget. City Manager Jason Reynolds reiterated that City Staff was tasked with reducing the budget by $8 million in Fiscal Year 2024 and resetting the budget for how the City operates in years to come. • Historical Philosophy • Operational Update City Council Special Meeting Minutes April 15, 2025 Page 6 of 6 • Look back at fiscal year 2025 • Preview for fiscal year 2026 Council Members are concerned how to respond to citizen calls regarding potential cuts to com- munity programs and amenities. As well as discussing concerns for these budget cuts not being sustainable every year. City Council Members applauded Department Directors for their hard work participation in this process. City Manager Jason Reynolds received guidance from City Council to move forward with 2026 preview budget and continued his presentation referencing Exhibit A. • Direction on Tax Rate (No new revenue) • Operating Cost (without and with personnel) • BAWA Rate potential increase City Council Members expressed their concern for increasing cost for Capital items without new businesses or ability to keep up with inflation cost. How will this affect personnel with the implied budgets. Council Members agreed to transfer the Transportation cost over to the Municipal Devel- opment District. City Manager Jason Reynolds received guidance from City Council Members to build a model of No new revenue as well and a proposal of a seventy -cent tax rate, to present to Council for a more in-depth discussion. Mayor Charles Johnson informed the City Council Members Item 2.b.,3., City Operating Report- ing will be discussed at the May 8, 2025 City Council Meeting. 10. ADJOURN With there being no further business to discuss, Mayor Charles Johnson adjourned the April 15, 2025 Special City Council Meeting at 7:03 P.M. Angela acks4 City of Bayto 6/20/2025 EXHIBIT "At' • Historical Philosophy • Where We Are Now • Decision • Next Steps Historical School Bond Election Results in Taxes Ifsoxa w �� "WM4 N"1010 61 16 792 M•71t�u, a a l70.0 •4D 71 M 661 j_792 xw1u7 110 w 455 Mn141 F7 411 .�_ -`O72 n9 55 6U4 werlOSi 116 61 SU "M4 .6L NA 71••1014 57 n 47A • GO Bond • Service Delivery Changes • Tax Rate GO Bond Considerations . •Cb9.6•ep• dA brtlPo.0 7 nol,a�pq., 7Mr.1n. 9m• b�vpY 0• TGO.�M•f�Itl01q.W mxso7�o1 �+ha►.w+ . . a 1<ee 1 Pow er do li•[Y � • orame.o+e e. m m...�rerbl M"w. a.a 7w un ggwt.la ..acoeore.�n I i svv + F.."YUM7ALMl.nwMb +CNYWE nw7.w .M•007p 9.W nlpry.3•wr. F1* S1Mbn i h aPAM 9u If yes, what's next? • Continue paying Hal f • Bond committee continues • Educate versus advocate • Creation of outreach material • Implement speaker's bureau t. r �Ll i � { l i A s1 a r4k�d 2 a sA Xs�8 A id AP e'er'•__+i�44 i 6/20/2025 Break • v -zone...,,. amNlift A1V7,1.— Look back at FY25 Service Delivery Changes Mtakh ® Library Planning b Development ® Publke Affairs OParks & Recreation ® Public Works • Historical Philosophy • Operational Update • Direction on Tax Rate • Look back at FY25 • Retreat Direction • Preview for FY26 FY26 Budget Preview 91 Retreat Direction from Pebruary FxDot Mowing } Police & Fire Special Funds Demolition x. 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