ccswks 04-10-1991
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SPECIAL MEETING OF THE CITY COUNCIL
APRIL 10, 1991
The Schertz City Council convened in Special Workshop Session,
Wednesday, April 10, 1991 at 7:00 p.m. in the Conference Room of
the Municipal Complex, 1400 Schertz Parkway, Schertz, Texas. The
following members were present: Mayor Earl W. Sawyer, presiding;
Hal Baldwin; Barbara Stanhope; Mary Marsh and Ken Greenwald.
Absent: Mr. Joe Potempa. Staff present were City Manager Kerry
R. Sweatt and City Secretary June Krause.
#1 HEARING OF RESIDENTS: A. Mr. George Mower said he had
come to ask what Council intended to do about the ordinance
defining vehicles as a nuisance. His contention was that the
ordinance was defective because it was not enforceable. He said
"We have lived under police action when my vehicle was parked
legally on my property. This is not the way to treat residents."
He said he would like an official determination.
Mr. Sweatt said there is still a question of enforcement. Our
legal department has determined that our process in the past, of
considering a vehicle inoperative because it does not have a
valid motor vehicle sticker and a license, is not the best course
of action. He continued saying that we have made some changes to
our inspection process in which an additional determination,
including demonstration, or lack thereof, to determine if it is
operative will be a part of the inspection procedure. If, after
the City Attorney has had a chance to review our ordinance with
court cases, they find a change is necessary, he will be making
that recommendation.
Mayor Sawyer told Mr. Mower we will make sure he was informed
either by mail or in person.
B. Mr. Willman asked if all the right-of-way for the FM 3009
project has been purchased.
Mr. Sweatt said that out of some twenty parcels, we have
purchased sixteen and the other four are ready - the owners have
agreed to convey. The paper work is in the pipeline.
Mayor Sawyer said he had talked with Representative Ed Kuempel
about the FM 3009 project; and he had been led to understand we
are a year or more away from purchasing the right-of-way.
Mr. Sweatt said there are some utility adjustments to be
prepared. All the material has been purchased and is on hand.
Once the Highway Department gives us the go-ahead, we could be
finished within a maximum of ninety days. We should have all the
paperwork through the title company on the land acquisition
wi thin thirty days. He added, that then we will set up the
meeting with the Highway Commission and ask both Representative
Kuempel and Senator Zaffarini to attend with us.
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#2 Discussion of awarding bids for materials for the
Schirmerville Water System Improvements.
Mr. Sweatt reminded Council that this is a joint project with
Bexar County, through a CDBG proposal. After review, some
$75,000 was allocated to this project, coupled with the remainder
of the work to be done by the City of Schertz. We prepared bids
for items to complete this job. On March 28th bids were opened -
four bids were received. These bids ranged from an adjusted low
bid of $82,929.61 to a high of $84,946.80. Upon review, it was
discovered the low bidder omitted one item on the specifications.
Based on this and complete review of the bids, staff recommends
Council consider the second low bidder, McAllen Pipe & Supply in
the amount of $83,216. 61. This is a joint project with Bexar
County and will go before them next Tuesday and they will then
release some $75,000 for the material.
When Mr. Baldwin asked about other projects done by McAllen Pipe
and Supply, Mr. Bierschwale advised that they furnished materials
for our twelve inch line, Al so they are one of the three main
companies we deal with on a daily basis.
Mr. Sweatt ended by saying we will be recommending action on this
item at the next meeting, subject to the approval of Bexar
County.
#3 Discussion of awarding bid for FM 1518 Water Line East
of Randolph Air Force Base.
Mr. Sweatt reminded Council that in September of 1990. they
approved contracting with Randolph Air Force Base for a major
water line extension down FM 1518. This is the realization of
that project for 4863 feet of 12" pipe and related appurtenances.
Seven bids were received on March 28th, with the apparent low
bidder being Ram II Construction Company in the amount of
$101,700. The Water Department and Engineering Department have
reviewed the apparent low bidders qualifications and bonding
capability and his previous work experience and find no
particular negative reports. The company has done work in a
number of other cities. From what we can determine, they are a
qualified bidder and on that basis we will be recommending
Council award the bid to Ram II Construction Company in the
amount of $101,700. This will have the net effect of extending
the water line over a mile into the Schirmerville area at no cost
to us. In fact, we will be reimbursed for administrative cost.
We believe this to be a major addition to our system.
Mr. Baldwin wanted staff to ask for the principal owners of Ram
II Construction Company.
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#4 Discussion of camera purchase.
Mayor Sawyer read a memo from the City Manager in which he said
we could use the eXisting camera from the police department when
a function is pre-scheduled. Black and white film is available
for our 35mm cameras and we can arrange for either Mrs. Krause or
Mr. Sweatt to take the necessary photographs. He added in the
memo that due to developing time and news schedules, he was not
sure if this would assist in securing better publicity with the
newspapers.
Mr. Greenwald stated that he had discussed this with Mr. Sweatt.
He said he had talked with Mr. Lindemann at the Herald and with
Leanna Lake at the Recorder-Times and both have agreed to give us
three rolls of film at no charge. He said the Herald winds their
own film so there would be approximately eight shots per roll.
We can either give it to the reporter at the meeting or drop it
off the next day and they will develop it. Of course this does
not guarantee that we would get anything in the papers.
MR JOE POTEMPA ARRIVED AT 7:28 P.M.
Mrs. Marsh said again that the City needs one person to be
responsible to make all contacts with the newspapers. This
person would be known to all organizations, who would call
information in to this individual. This person would in turn
call the newspapers and tell them we need to get this in the
papers.
Mrs. Marsh also said the Herald, our official newspaper, has not
done anything for us in months and she was in favor of changing
our official newspaper to the Recorder-Times right now.
Mr. Baldwin said he had been dealing with the papers for
seventeen years. He has found that they will publ ish articles
and pictures if you take the pictures and write the articles and
submit it to them, Mr. Baldwin also said when we asked for bids,
that is for printing our legal notices, not necessar il y news
coverage.
After further discussion, it was Council concensus to solicit
bids for official newspaper.
Mr. Greenwald, going back to the agenda item, said there seems to
be no need to purchase a camera.
#5 Discussion of P&Z recommendation on proposed changes to
the Zoning Ordinance regarding Site Plan Procedures.
Mr. Sweatt said this came to Council as a Planning & Zoning
Commission recommendation and goes into more detail as to what
someone is proposing to do with a piece of property. It goes
into considerable detail. Planning Commission approved these
changes and recommended Council go over them; and if they had
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questions or comments. to bring them back to them.
said staff believes this is a workable process.
Mr, Sweatt
Mr. Greenwald said it goes into a
or iginal artist' rendering and is a
held to, unlike the artist' rendering.
lot more detail than the
document that they can be
Mrs. Stanhope, referring to parking spaces on page eleven, asked
how the builder would know the ul timate utilization of some of
the square footage in a shopping mall so they could provide for
the proper parking.
Mr. Sweatt said true no one knows what every square footage of a
mall would be; but they must have an initial plan and develop the
parking accordingl y. If the use changes down the road that
requires more parking spaces, then they would have to make some
other arrangement for parking, such as off site parking,
Mr. Potempa asked if the present strip shopping centers would be
grandfathered and was told they would.
After further discussion of the proposed ordinance,
agreed with the recommendations of the Planning and
Commission and asked that they proceed.
Council
Zoning
#6 Discussion of P&Z recommendation for amendments to
Ordinance 87-S-9, Ordinance creating the City Planning & Zoning
Commission; and to the Planning and Zoning Rules of Procedures,
Mr. Sweatt advised that Planning & Zoning, in an effort to
resolve some conflicts between Ordinance 87-S-9 and the P&Z Rules
of Procedure, has made some proposed changes to both documents.
Additional changes are proposed for purposes of better
clar ification in reading and interpreting the documents. To
qualify membership, they proposed to say members should be
qualified registered voters. Regarding terms for removal of
office, they are suggesting "failure to attend two-thirds of the
regular meetings of the Commission."
Council discussed these provisions and came to the conclusion
that it should be two-thirds of the regular meetings of some
given time.
Mr. Sweatt said they also propose to add a section to change the
paragraph whereby a Chairman cannot succeed himself to read
"except by a unanimous vote of the Commission". The next item
concerns Section 7, Commission Actions, paragraph 2 to clarify
the vote to show that they must have four concurring votes for an
item to pass.
They also clarified, by saying that the Chairperson is a voting
member of the Commission and there is a distinction between the
"Secretary" and "Recording Secretary". They then made some
clar if ications to the Rules of Procedures, mostl y housekeeping
items.
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There being no further discussion, Mayor Sawyer asked that this
be on the next action agenda.
#7 CITY MANAGER'S REPORT: A. The Chamber of Commerce
Board will meet April 17th at 1:00 p.m. in Converse, in keeping
with their plan to rotate meetings.
B. The Chamber Mixer will be April 25th at 5:00 p.m. at Kountry
Kitchen.
C. Selma will have their Grand Opening of their Municipal
Building on the 11th of April from 4:00 to 8:00 pm.
D. Through the good efforts of our Street Department, we now
have a speaker system that will be used at the parade reviewing
stand and one that will be used at the large pavilion and
permanentl y installed speakers and ampl if ier in the Community
Center.
E. Mr. Sweatt then gave a verbal report on the budget through
fifty percent of the fiscal year. He indicated that the General
Fund has realized 67.7% of the revenue for the year, ad valorem
taxes some 98.8% have been received, sales tax is some 55.4% of
budget through this period of time. Water /Waste Water is onl y
about 44.9% of budget, real izing that the bulk of the receipts
will be coming in during the summer months of the last half of
the fiscal year. SAFES have realized 53.2% of revenues. Overall
the General Fund is 45.4% spent for this period, Water/Waste
Water expended 32.2% and SAFES expended 41.9% of budget. Other
than the reoccurring expenditures, our major expenses this
quarter have been our major allocation to the Appraisal District,
a fairly large purchase of library books, completion of our
payments for audit services, specific engineering costs related
to projects, payments for commercial insurance, a major
expendi ture for a portion of the roof on this building, our
quarterly payment to SAFES, payment for legal services related to
some case work, payment for a law enforcement network, sewer line
easement for the Schertz/New Braunfels major sewer line project
and the purchase of a half-ton pickup. Reflected in our electric
consumption, over a two-month period, we have reduced our power
cost by about $1100 for this building.
F. The last item is that we have a property owner who is
apparently willing to donate a track of land to the City for an
animal shelter. We hope to bring the plans for the new shelter
to you shortly after the negotiations with the land are
completed. He said there have been some recommendations from our
animal control personnel for changes to our animal control
ordinance. These changes are concerns from an enforcement
standpoint and mayor may not be a recommendation to change the
ordinance.
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#8 ITEMS BY COUNCIL: .t-1J:'~~arsh: A. She asked if we know
if all the water by the railroad is the resul t of the lack of
work by the railroad department when they cleaned that place up.
Mr. Sweatt said there was sufficient rain in the watershed to put
that amount of water at that level. Mayor Sawyer said he fel t
the railroad people left the area in a lot better shape that it
was in.
B. She said she noticed in the newspaper that Garden Ridge has
decided not to accept our proposal. She asked if that was going
to be discussed.
Mr. Sweatt said he would ask the City Attorney to schedule a
meeting with the Counci 1 under an executive session to discus s
this.
Mr. Potempa - A. He reported on a Humane Society Meeting the
previous Monday night. They discussed the dunking booth for the
July 4th Jubilee, their audit will be completed June 1st, they
will have a Jamboree in August. They received a Texas Flag from
Representative Kuempel to be used at the new Animal Facil i ty.
They said they will conduct a membership drive in conjunction
wi th the opening of the new structure. He had a copy of their
budget.
C. Mr. Potempa reported on the Scholarship Committee meeting of
the Business Club, saying there were four applicants received -
four good candidates. He announced the winner as Angela Rehn,
who lives at 409 Winburn and works at Wuests.
Mrs~ Stanho-2g - A. Reported a pot hole on Lindberg, adding that
it had been filled on this date.
B. She asked if we had any input from Deer Haven when we had the
heavy rain? Mr. Sweatt said he had not had any telephone calls.
C. What is the status of Data Processing project?
said 95% of the hardware has been received and
software and training is in progress.
Mr. Sweatt
98% of the
D. She asked if Council should discuss funding of the Task
Force. Mr. Sweatt said he did not think it would be a problem
but it would be brought up at budget time.
E. She asked what Council members would do at the 4th of July
parade - such as vehicles. Mrs. Marsh reminded them that five of
the Council would be marching with the VFW.
Mr. Baldwin A. Asked if the City Manager had spoken to
Universal City regarding the Highway Department funding another
crossing of the Cibolo Creek. Mr. Sweatt advised that he had
not but would approach their staff if that was Council's desire.
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B. SAFES Jamboree was very successful - they exceeded $20,000
with their raffle and auction.
Mr. Greenwald - A. He had furnished several months financial
reports for Cibolo Valley Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council.
B. BVYA has their candy problem down to about $1800 from over
$12,000. There are ten teams in the Pee Wee League - the biggest
group they have ever had.
# 9 ITEMS BY MAYOR: A.
Kuempel about R. O. A. D. and he
Austin at the State level.
He said he had talked with Mr.
had contacted their people in
B. He asked about traffic control signs in Greenshire. Although
the ordinance was passed some time ago, there are still no signs
there. Mr. Sweatt said it was being taken care of.
C. Received a letter from a 4th grader in Round Rock asking how
our city got its name. He said he would write him a letter.
# 10 ADJOURNMENT: There being no further business, Mayor
Sawyer declared the meeting to be adjourned at 8:59
ATTEST:
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