City Council for April 2, 2019

Copperas Cove City Council meeting April 2, 2019

Hello again Copperas Cove! Thankyou for checking in on another City Council Update! This one was rather short (Just over an hour long), but as always - there was some good info that was put out. So, lets get started!

Council members:
Joann Courtland-Present
Fred Chavez-Present
Dan Yancey-Present
Jay Manning-Present
Kirby Lack-Present
Marc Payne-Present
Charlie Youngs-Present

Mayor Candidates:
Bradi Dewald Diaz-Present
Ron Nelson-Present
Joey Acfalle-Absent
Brandi Weiand-Absent

The Agenda:

Announcements:

Ryan Haverlah: 

-This Saturday, from 8:30-11am, there will be a "Texas Trash Off" taking place. Please meet "Keep Copperas Cove Beautiful" at the Library for step off. 

-Also on Saturday from 8am-Noon, there will be a Mayoral Candidate Meet & Greet at the VFW. There will be breakfast offered for $7. 

-That following Monday (April 8th), there will be a Mayoral Candidate Political Forum held at the CCISD Board Room (Across from the Fire Station, Next to Lil' Tex). This will start at 5:30 pm and go until 8pm. The first hour of it will be a meet and greet, so if work has you running late, you still have time to get in and catch the topics. 

-April 13th (Saturday), there will be an Easter Egg Roundup at City Park from 9-11am

Citizens Forum:

-Richard  Smith started things off with concerns about the neighborhood he lives in. He bought a house over near Courtney Lane, near SC Lee and JL Williams. He's noticed that there is a heavy amount of traffic in the area trying to merge out into and in from FM116 - and it will only be getting heavier as they add in more houses. He's requesting a traffic light be installed at the FM116/Courtney intersection. (Editors Note: This is a common problem brought up with the area, and Mr Richard is not the first person to bring this topic up. I wouldn't be surprised to see a traffic light in this area by the end of the year - Jeremy). He also brought up that the same intersection is starting to deteriorate and a dip is starting to form. He had brought this up to Councilman Marc Payne in the past and it was promptly filled in and road re-striped. He would like to see the city address this issue once again. To end, he brought up a concern that for his road, there's really only one way in and out, so if there should be an emergency that would block that road, he could find himself stuck in the area. There could be a second route out, but the second route has a locked gate blocking anyone from going through. (Editors Note: This may be a tough issue to have addressed. Technically, if the city were to add a second way out simply because a citizen brought up an issue with it, they COULD be opening themselves up to complaints from everyone living on a cul-de-sac street. Also, there usually isn't anything they can do without impeding on someones personal property - such as would be the case with the gated access that's locked up. I feel like Mr Richard brings up a valid point, but that may just be something homeowners have to pay attention to before we buy a house - Jeremy)

-Terri Deans brought up once again that the city is still experiencing problems with Fathom in regards to billing and customer service. She would really like to see the city address these problems. With that aside, she is an admin with Central Texas Disasters Response Team. They are currently planning a mass casualty drill on May 7th and are looking for as many victim actors as they can get. They need everyone - all ages. Also, if you have a group that could use some emergency preparedness training, they can send someone out to give that training. If you are interested in training, being part of the mass casualty drill, or joining the team - please give Terri a call at 254-238-1839. Please be aware that she does not answer phone calls from numbers she doesn't recognize (dang phone scammers ruined that for all of us - amiright), so just leave a brief voicemail and she will call you right back. 

-Alicia Menard: I believe she may have been with the Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce. She was speaking about some other events going on in the area, but she was speaking so fast that I wasn't able to get most of it down. I did catch that there will be an Ambassador Garage Sale at the Cove Terrace Shopping Center on April 6th. (Editors Note: A little tip I recently learned for those of you who get nervous when you speak in front of groups like I do- talk slower than you think you should. Because things are going so fast and racing in your head, if you slow down slower than you think you should be, you generally wind up talking at a very good pace. I've tried it and it seems like it works. If nothing else, it calms me down - Jeremy)

-Jonathan Haywood closed things out by bringing up the driveway between the post office and the car wash. All of us locals know the one - it has MAJOR pot holes in it, and a lot of us drive in the grass to avoid it all together if we have to go that way. The problem with it is that is not a city owned road, and the business owner who owns that parking lot/driveway/road refuses to fix it. John realizes the city can't do anything themselves since they don't own it, but he asks the council if they could reach out to the business owner and help influence them to fix that road.

Consent Agenda:

All four items passed unanimously. They were for past minutes from previous meetings.

Action Items:

H1: The Chamber of Commerce came to the council with a request for HOT funds that was about nine months after the deadline for some of the expenses for the Rabbit Fest. The date of submission was March 21, 2019. Alicia Menard, the new president of  the CoC, is requesting $13,375 in HOT funds. Hotel Occupancy Tax funds are the extra taxes you pay to stay in a hotel or motel and can be only used to promote tourism in a city where it is collected. The deadline for this fiscal year was last spring. The Interim City Manager informed the CoC that only $3880 remain in the fund for promotion of Arts so that the total amount would be $11,255. Mr Yancey asked the Chamber president why the request was not submitted last year and she told him that there was no interest in requesting HOT funds with the prior Chamber President. However, she is new in her position and rather than linger on the past, she is trying to look to the future and make things better for everyone - including she wants to rebuild the relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council. All of the CoC members have been working hard at trying to get things in a better position, and she fully expects to be able to turn that relationship around between them and the city. She came into this realizing that the request was late and that it could very well be shot down because of that. But she wanted to at least try to get it late rather than never, and she fully plans on going for all the HOT funds she can moving in the future to help promote the arts. Councilman Youngs stated the the previous City Manager and Council destroyed the relationship between the city and both the EDC and CoC so he's all for this to help rebuild that relationship. Kirby Lack stated that he's trying to get away from bending rules for everyone, and the CoC has missed their deadline. Alicia stated she fully understands his point, and reiterated that she is trying to slide this one in with the intention of doing things right moving forward. To get the full $13,375, they would have to do some adjusting of the budget after the fact, so Jay Manning requested an amendment lowering the amount to $11,255. The amendment and the action item that passed lowered the request to $11,255 . 

Vote was 5-2. (Lack voted no based on principle/Youngs voted no because he wanted the full amount) PASS

Our question is that on the line "Registration of Convention Delegates" for $1260. 

Who are the delegates for the "Rabbit Fest"?

Side note: Mayoral Candidate Bradi Dewald Diaz is listed on the board of trustees for the Chamber of Commerce. 

H2: After many long, agonizing discussions regarding fee reductions at the Civic Center, the council voted to approve reducing the daily fee from $500 to $250 for everyone - again, with no discounts for any special groups. PASS

H3: For this item they were just making a few name changes with some positions and jobs. One of the bigger changes that citizens will see is the Planning Dept will now be called the Developmental Services Dept. PASS

H4: This was just Councilmembers Joann Courtland and Fred Chavez swapping some external board positions with each other. Nothing that 99% of us citizens will notice. Just like with H3, it was more of a formality. PASS

CITY REPORTS:

Ryan Haverlah gave report to staff on utility billing complaints and meter replacements. 

-With the recent update to the Fathom online portal, customers can set a payment date that is after the due date. A problem that has been coming up is some customers have been setting their online payment date for after their due date, and in some cases it has fallen on their water shutoff date. So, they think they are ok because they have an auto-draft, but don't realize that if the money isn't to Fathom by their shutoff date, that water is getting shut off. Additionally, all calls to Fathom or the city after 3 pm to turn water back on aren't processed until the next business day. This is because the final 2 hours is to allow employees to close out work orders generated during the day. Fred Chavez asked if the city can have Fathom get with whoever does their code and set calendar parameters so you can't select an auto-pay date that falls after your due date. Ryan explained that there are some complications with that such as if someone sets up auto pay today (April 2nd) to have it take effect May 1st, but then they don't pay their bill for the month of April manually and it's due on the 12th. Well, now it's going to be received very late and will most likely lead to water being shut off. Dan Yancey asked if we can have Fathom allow customers to set their own due date since some customers are on a monthly income. Ryan said he will look into both options. 

- There have been problems with multiple bills being sent out within days of each other. A lot of these have been resolved by now and most of those were due to either local meter reading issues that happened before all the meters were changed, or connectivity issues with the meters and data collectors that are placed around the city. There's been other cases that have popped up - one recent one being a customer who was VERY public about the fact that they were double billed and couldn't pay for other essentials because they had such a high amount to pay for their water bill. This was found to be that they were actually behind on payments. Several failed attempts have already been made to get in contact with this customer, but the city will keep trying to reach out and talk to the customer about this issue. 

-There have been concerns regarding high water usage alerts. Typically with these alerts, a fast leak (burst pipe, for example) will send you a notice after one day of continual leak, and a slow leak (leaky faucet) will send you a notice after two days of continual leak. You can adjust these parameters in your Fathom online account settings. If a customer can provide proof that the leak was professionally repaired, they can request a sewer use credit for the period of time that they had the leak. This will be based on normal usage. These are limited to 1 credit every 12 months. 

-One customer recently stated they had a bill showing 50,000 gallons of use. This was found to not be true both with an account search and in talking with the customer. 

-In regards to double billing complaints, there is a base rate that everybody with a water meter pays. This is just to have access to that water connection and for maintenance of the city water system. After that, you are charged $4.75 per 1,000 gallons used, and that is calculated down to 1/1000 of a gallon. The sewer rate is $6 per 1,000 gallons used. Seniors get a 20% discount on all charges up to 5,000 gallons used as approved by the city council recently. 

-Recently, a customer got two bills that were received two days apart. It was legitimate, and they were even for the same billing cycle. What happened was the first bill sent out was found to be incorrect, revised, and sent out again with an updated balance. But, nobody every reached out to the customer to let them know what was going on which put them into a panic - rightfully so. Everything was eventually straightened out, and I'm assuming this is an issue that has been addressed internally. 

- The city began installing meters in October 2016. They did a full swap of meter and sensors. There were originally about 1,500 unreplaced meters that they could not replace safely without interrupting service to surrounding areas. A lot of times, this was due to things such as someone pouring concrete all around the meter, preventing the city from replacing anything without breaking up the concrete. The city employees have been making significant progress in replacing those problem meters, but they do still have some that have not been replaced yet. There have been recent comments about only the sensor being replaced and not the meter, or vice versa (basically a retrofit). This simply is not true. 

Future Agenda Items:

Marc and Fred both would like to look at having their absences approved

Charlie Youngs would like to look at procedures for selecting EDC staff. He would like to allow the EDC staff to review applications and submit comments before sending to council. He explicitly stated the EDC staff would not be allowed to remove any applications - only provide their own comments on applicants. 

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