Loading...
ccreg 04-01-1990 -t REGULAR MEETING OF THE CITY COUNCIL AP R I L 3, 1 9 90 The Schertz City Council convened in Regular Session, Tuesday, April 3, 1990, at 7:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers of the Municipal Complex, 1400 Schertz Parkway, Schertz, Texas. The following members were present: Mayor Earl W. Sawyer, presiding; Earl Hartzog; Hal Baldwin, Barbara Stanhope, Mary Marsh and Ken Greenwald. Staff present were City Manager Kerry Sweatt and City Secretary June Krause. Mayor Sawyer opened the meeting with everyone joining him in the Pledge of Allegiance. He then introduced Mr. Joe Potempa, President of the Schertz Business Club, who presented Teresa Martinez with the "Employee of the Quarter" plaque. Along with the plaque, Mr. Potempa advised Teresa that she also would receive a free steak dinner at the Kountry Kitchen. #1 APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Mr. Hartzog moveg to approve the minutes of the Regular Meetings of February 20th and March 6th and the Special Meeting of February 28, 1990. Mr. Greenwald seconded the motion. Mrs. Stanhope referred to the minutes of the Special Meeting of February 28, 1990 and requested the next to last sentence of item #4 be corrected to read: "He went on to say that it probably is a city street because utilities are there". Mayor Sawyer then called for a vote on the motion, with the following results: AYES: Greenwald. NAYS: None ABSTAINING: Mr. and Mrs. Marsh for the Councilmembers Hartzog, Baldwin, Stanhope, Marsh and Baldwin for the minutes of February 20th minutes of February 28th and March 6th. #2 HEARING OF RESIDENTS: None # 3 CABLE TV HEARING: Mr. Dennis Marmon, V ice President I General Manager of Paragon Cable was present to discuss their current rate increase. He said that he had been with Paragon in San Antonio since September of 1989 and the acquisition of the cable company took place in April. He referred to the increase right after the acquisition, saying he could not say whether or not that 17.3% increase was valid and right. He said that of the six senior managers that were present when that rate increase took place, there is onl y one remaining. They have totall y reorganized their company. He said that the City of San Antonio had conducted surveys nationally and found that Paragon's rates are comparable. He went on to say that their company is very sensitive to the price they must charge for services and that their basic service price will be adjusted 7.9% to $18.30, the lowest pr ice change in the last four years. He said they are 180 also offering a guarantee that the new basic service price effective May 1, 1990 will not change for 18 months. He felt this rate is very competitive. He said that they now have a hiring freeze and have reduced their employees from 500 to their current figure of 380 and their quality of service has increased. Mr. Marmon said they are trying to do everything they can to control costs. Mr. Hartzog asked what their profit margin was currently. Mr. Marmon said yoU cannot look at their business like you do other businesses, you have to look at it as a return on investment. He said they are currently looking at about a 12% return on investment at the end of the 15 year franchise life. Mr. Hartzog said he was not pleased with the rate increase and he had talked with a number of people, who said they would discontinue cable service. Mr. Baldwin said he was not happy with the 7.9% increase right after the 17% increase and he appreciated the effort of holding this rate for 18 months. He said he would continue with the service because he enjoys programs that you cannot get without cable. Mrs. Stanhope said, as for herself, she has already said that is enough and had her service discontinued. She has talked with numerous people though who are definitely upset about the increase. They don't feel that the service they are getting is worth the increase. Mrs. Marsh said she before and she too is wi th the programming outages. agrees with everything Council has said not happy. She said she was not satisfied and they seemed to have an awful lot of Mr. Greenwald agreed with everything that had been said. he took exception to the guarantee of 18 months with increase because it specifies "basic rate". He said to means that everyone with any premium channel will increase there is. He no him get said rate that any Mr. Marmon said all premium services, with the exception of HBO, have been at the same rates since 1983 - in fact, Disney has come down $2 from what it use to be. Mr. Greenwald said he also felt there were too many did not agree with the telephone answering either as tried to call and waited 20 minutes and then hung up. was fed up and had cut his service in half. outages and he recently He said he Mayor Sawyer said he felt the general feeling is that people are not happy with the service they are receiving from the company. --~~. 1 t~ i _;: I.). i Mr. Marmon said the $25,000,000 that was paid to San Antonio was paid by Rogers and did not impact the purchase price of their company. He said he was concerned when he hears problems people are having with service or billing and he would look into it. He said that when there is a problem with cable outages, they know almost immediately and get someone out to look into it. After Mr. Marmon answered some general audience, Mayor Sawyer thanked Mr. Marmon public hearing. questions from for coming to the the #4 Police Chief announcement regarding appointments. Chief Agee said that when they have promotions and new employees in their department, they like to bring them to Council and introduce them. He then introduced Sandy Butler, who replaced Beverly Case. Sgt. Tacquard left to join the Highway Patrol and as a result they held an assessment process to fill that slot and although it was very close, Officer Zambrano became Sgt. Zambrano the first of the month. He then introduced his newest officer Paul Gumm. Chief Agee then announced that one of the new vehicles was out front if anyone wanted to see it. #5 ORDINANCE: Mayor Sawyer introduced an ordinance and read the caption as follows: ORDINANCE NO. 90-S-11 AN ORDINANCE BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SCHERTZ, TEXAS, AMENDING THE SIGN ORDINANCE, NO. 8 6-S- 2 8, ARTICLE I I, GENERAL PROVISIONS AND ARTICLE VI, SIGNS PERMITTED IN ALL BUSINESS, COMMERCIAL AND MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS, SECTION 5b (3), SETBACK; AND PROVIDING A REPEALING CLAUSE. Mrs. March mQ-yeg to approve the final reading of an ordinance amending the sign ordinance. Mr. Greenwald seconded the motion, which carried with the following vote: AYES: Councilmembers Hartzog, Baldwin, Stanhope, Marsh and Greenwald. NAYS: None #6 ORDINANCE: Mayor Sawyer introduced an ordinance and read the caption as follows: ORDINANCE NO. 90-M-12 AN ORDINANCE PROVIDING THAT THE CODE OF ORDINANCES, CITY OF SCHERTZ, TEXAS, BE AMENDED BY REVISING CHAPTER 12-1/2, ATTACHMENT 'B', PROVIDING FOR THE USE AND REGULATIONS OF SWIMMING POOL FACILITIES AND REPEALING ALL ORDINANCES IN CONFLICT. f; 82' JL' Mr. Hartzog moveg to approve the final reading of an ordinance amending Chapter 12-1/2 of the Code. Mrs. Stanhope seconded the motion, which carried with the following vote: AYES: Councilmembers Hartzog, Baldwin, Stanhope, Marsh and Greenwald. NAYS: None #7 ORDlNABCE: Mayor Sawyer introduced an ordinance and read the caption as follows: AN ORDINANCE BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SCHERTZ, TEXAS, AUTHORIZING THE ABANDONMENT OF CERTAIN LAND AND REAL PROPERTY INTERESTS CURRENTLY OWNED BY THE CITY; AND OTHER MATTERS IN CONNECTION THEREWITH. Mr. Greenwald moved to approve the first reading of an ordinance author izing the abandonment of certain property. Mrs. Marsh seconded the motion, which carried as follows: AYES: Councilmembers Hartzog, Baldwin, Stanhope, Marsh and Greenwald. NAYS: None #8 BIDS: Consider action regarding bids for sale of Elm Street Right-of-way. Mr. Sweatt advised that letters were sent to to the adjoining property owners for the 50' right-of-way, which has been determined excess to our needs. We had the property appraised by our tax office. We have not received any offers for this property as of the deadline and now suggest and recommend that this property be offered for public sale and solicit bids. The property can be used for residential purposes; but it will require a various to put a residence on the 50' lot and we have asked the Planning & Zoning Commission to consider that as part of the sale. Mr. Baldwin moved to offer the Elm Street right-of-way property for sale to the highest bidder. Mr. Greenwald seconded the motion, which carried with the following vote: AYES: Councilmembers Hartzog, Baldwin, Stanhope, Marsh and Greenwald. NAYS: None #9 AUDIT: Consider annual report from audit firm of Melick, Thorpe and Vaughan. Mr. Gordan Armstrong thanked Council for the opportunity to come before them and to do the audit. He then thanked Mr. Sweatt and his staff, specifically Debbi Williams and Alice Austin. He ) ~t" advised that they did spend over an hour with the audit committee and went over the audit in detail. He welcomed any individual questions on a one-on-one basis with any member of the Council. He advised that this is the second year in a row that the General Fund has not been a pretty picture, this year the City lost money as far as the unreserved fund balance. He added that had we not transferred some $160,000 from the Water Department we would have been in serious trouble. He said as it is, we ended up with a negative fund balance of over $11,000. He said one of the big areas that caused problems is the over budgeting of the Municipal Court fines revenues. He said the General Fund has no reserves, in fact it is $11,000 in the hole. A city of this size should have half million to one million dollars sitting in an unreserved fund balance. He added that the Council should look very hard at how the money is spent. He went on to say that in the Water Fund, basically the City lost $71,000 and part of that was the result of the transfer to the General Fund; otherwise the Water Fund would have had about an $80,000 profit last year. Mr. Armstrong said that in the SAFES fund we lost $12,000. There are a lot of uncollected accounts in SAFES; however SAFES' collection rate is a lot better than some of the other small cities in the area. He said they had looked a little at this year I s revenues and there is a need to make adjustments throughout the year on the expenditures and revenues, depending on how they are going. Mrs. Marsh said she believes that if you don't have money, you don't spend it. She said she did not read anywhere in the report that it said Schertz has serious problems and she asked why the audi tors do not put that in the report. Mr. Armstrong said it was not appropriate to state that in the report. Mrs. Marsh said there is a lot of stuff in the audit that needs answered - something needs to be really looked at and something done and real I y fast because we cannot afford to go through another year in this situation. She said her recommendation is that Council take this report up thoroughly at the next workshop. Mrs. Stanhope said she also would like to have Mr. Armstrong come to the workshop because she said she did not have the expertise but would like to understand what she was looking at. Mr. Armstrong said that the audit committee has met a couple of times during the last month and one of the recommendations is for the audit firm to come in and start doing a quarterly analysis so they could tell Council these things. He said that starting the end of July Mr. Melick would start doing the analysis. It may be a little late for this year but next year they will be in a better position. 184 Mr. Baldwin said that from the standpoint of a person that has been on the Council for seven years and has watched this take place year after year, Gordon Armstrong has said more at this meeting than any auditor ever said before. He said some things that should have been said three years ago but were not; and none of the Council had the expertise to figure out what was going on - to look at the audit and determine that every year the City was going down. The Audit Committee has gone over the audit and as bleak as it seems, there are some positive aspects. The overall financial picture really improved a little bit last year. It absolutely will be necessary to monitor our expenditures all this year and we do need to take a look at the revenues to see if we are on track. He said he did not think there was any doubt in anyone individual's mind on this City Council that when they were given a figure one and half years ago of some $400,000 of Municipal Court fines, they almost all agreed that it would be impossible to do but they were assured by a couple of patrolmen that it could be done very easily. The alternative to that was to pass a tax rate that would have been completely unacceptable. We hoped for the best but it did not material ize - we did not have a Warrant Officer, we had turmoil in the department, things just did not work out where we collected the revenues we anticipated. Hopefull Y this year we are on track, we may be still a little behind but at least it is better. He said we do have a fund balance of $50,000, which is not even one day's operating expenses and we should have at least half a million dollar fund balance. You need about a month or two month's operating funds in reserves; if for no other reason, just for the investment income you derive off that and as a safeguard against something happening. There have been some positive things in this past year - they have pulled some stray accounts together under General Fund so there is some accountability and a lot less work. Our Water and Sewer Fund transfer is down this year and our interest income is up, tax collections are 95% plus for the fifteenth or sixteenth year. He said we are trying to come out of this but panic is not going to do it. He said all the Council knew when they passed this budget that they were financiall y strapped. He said they passed a more than 8% tax rate to try to pick things up a little and he added we are probably going to have to continue to pass a lot higher tax rate than they would like. You just can not do it in one year. Mrs. Marsh said the Council are not experts like Mr. Armstrong but are laymen and people that really don't understand so you have to put your faith in somebody. She said she could not believe that somebody on the staff did not know; and if they did know, the Council should have been kept advised. Mayor Sawyer said that we hope that by the end of this fiscal year, we will see daylight. He said he felt the quarterly reports would help in this respect. / ~ "'-.1 ...~. ~f :~ Mr. Armstrong said he agreed that the loss is less this year than last and that last year he did say you are in trouble. He said he hoped this is the bottom of the trend. Mr. Melick said he hoped that at the workshop they could go through the work sheets and bring them alive for Council and give everybody a chance for interaction. Mr. Baldwin move~ to approve Greenwald seconded the motion, vote: the audit as presented. Mr. which carried with the following AYES: Councilmembers Hartzog, Baldwin, Stanhope, Marsh and Greenwald. NAYS: None Mayor Sawyer said he felt the Council has done an outstanding job considering that they were so short in the past. #10 BVYA: Consider action to allow Schertz-Cibolo- Universal City ISD to use BVYA leased building. Mayor Sawyer reminded Council that we lease the building to BVYA and the School Distr ict has requested to use the building for band practice for Corbett School. Mr. Baldwin said they are opening bids on new band hall/cafeteria and other improvements to Corbett Junior Hi School; and about the first thing they will have to do is tear down the present band hall, because that is where the new building will go. If this project is started between now and May, they won't have a band hall so the School District is asking that they be allowed to use the BVYA Hall for the remainder of this year and until the project is completed sometime in November next year. Mr. Baldwin said their insurance will cover any liability incurred. When asked about cleaning of the building, Mr. Baldwin said they have a custodian right across the street who will take care of that. Mr. Greenwald added that instruments stored there. rehearsal hall. He said that the building. there will be no equipment or It will strictly be used as a BVYA has no objection to them using Mrs. Stanhope asked if the City will have any responsibility if a child is hurt. Mr. Sweatt said we will ask that the school furnish us with certificate of insurance that holds the city harmless. Mr. Hartzog said the school has let BVYA use their gyms many times. Mr. Hartzog ~oy~~ to authorize BVYA Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD agreement with the City Manager. motion, which carried as follows: to lease the building to the as long as it is within Mrs. Stanhope seconded the 186 AYES: Councilmembers Hartzog, Stanhope, Marsh and Greenwald NAYS: None ABSTAINING: Mr. Baldwin #11 CITY MANAGER'S REPORT: A. The Economic Development Task Force has announced our second annual Business Appreciation Dinner to be held in late September. B. On July 4th activities, one of the changes this year is the addition of an Arts and Crafts display. Also the use of the area across from the park for the carnival and several other changes. C. There will be a TML Regional meeting on April 20th in Laredo, please give attendance plans as soon as possible. D. The United Suburban continuing negotiations franchise arrangements. Ci ties met with City this date and reported on Public Service regarding #12 ITEMS BY COUNCIL: Mr. Hartzoq: A. At the Library Board meeting they reported they made about $900 on the recent book sale. B. National Library Week is April 22nd through the 28th and they would like a proclamation. Mr. Sweatt advised that they are sol ici ting any donations and volunteers for the float committee. Mr. Baldwin reminded everyone that May 12th is Senior Citizen Appreciation Day. He added they are still looking for prizes. Mrs. Stanhope said she really enjoyed the article in the paper on Schertz and she was also glad to see the letter to the State Department of Highways regarding the Texas State Travel Guide and we hope to get Schertz's name included. Mrs. Marsh said the EDTF is getting ready to roll on the video, the script has been written and approved and they are in the process of getting the pictures to produce the best product for the least amount of money. Mr. Greenwald announced that April 14th at 9:00 a.m. will be the opening day for Baseball/Softball season. Council should be getting a formal invitation. #13 ITEMS BY MAYOR: A. April 22 through 28th is also National Volunteer Week and since we have called ourselves, for many years, the "City of Volunteers", we will proclaim that week in Schertz for the volunteers. i ) / I~I c~ B. National Arbor Day is the last Friday in Apr il and we will have a proclamation on that. C. Mayor Sawyer asked Council's concurrence to appoint Mr. Eloy Esquival to the Housing Authority Board to replace Mr. Keen, who had to resign. Mr. Sawyer said he had put Mr. Keen on the Recycling Committee. He also announced that the Executive Director of the Housing Authority has resigned and they are taking applications for that position. #14 ADJOURNMENT: Mr. Baldwin IDoveg the meeting be adjourned at 8:25 p.m., and Mr. Hartzog seconded the motion which carried unanimously. /2~ aa&~____ Mayor, City of S~tz, Texas ATTEST: