Happy Birthday Copperas Cove, P and Z, Special City Council

Happy Birthday Copperas Cove, P and Z, Special City Council!



Happy 140th, Copperas Cove!

Mrs Linda Ledger was the guest speaker and gave the attendees about a 10 minute summary on the history of Copperas Cove. She said that we as the citizens of our city need to be prepared for the 150th (Sesquicentennial) birthday. 

Don Nicholas reads a proclamation to the city from US Representative Roger Williams. There were many other city and county elected officials, along with candidates for Mayor and Central Texas College Board of Trustees, at the celebration.

Councilman Dan Yancey cutting the cake.

Special City Council Meeting on March 25, 2019 (Before the birthday party)

The Council:

Joann Courtland-Present

Fred Chavez-Present

Dan Yancey-Present

Jay Manning-Present

Kirby Lack-Present

Marc Payne-Present

Charlie Youngs-Absent

Mayoral Candidates:

Bradi Dewald Diaz-Present

Ron Nelson-Present

Joey Acfalle-Present

Brandi Weiand-Absent

The Agenda:

The purpose of the special meeting was due to the late delivery of the city's Fiscal Year 2018 Comprehensive Financial Report. During the last council meeting wanted the opportunity to review the report in detail. Jay Manning was reassured that the grammatical errors would be corrected before publication. Marc Payne was busy thumbing through the manual the entire time. 

FY 2018 Comprehensive Financial Report

The vote was 5-1 (Payne opposed it).

Planning and Zone Commission for March 25, 2019

Commissioners:

Bob Martin-Present

Ken Thomas-Present

Rob Endter-Present

Adam Martin-Absent

Howard Hawk-Present

Dale Treadway-Present

Mayoral Candidates:

Bradi Dewald Diaz-Absent

Ron Nelson-Present

Joey Acfalle-Present

Brandi Weiand-Absent

The Agenda:

There were three public hearings for the meeting:

Public Hearing #1 dealt with a requested rezoning on 1501 Canyon Drive (Private Road). The owner  (who is presently overseas) is request that his property be completely zoned R-1 so he can build a home on it. He no representation at the hearing. It is presently zoned R-1 and B-4, which means a future business could possibly relocate there. Six speakers showed up to speak against the rezoning. They told the commission that he has placed the property for sale and don't believe he will build only one home on it or just outright sell it. There were concerns of vehicular access, power access, right of way, easement. The commissioners voted 5-0 to table for 30 days.

Public Hearing #2 dealt with the rezoning of 1006 S 9th Street, from B-2 to R-1. Kid's World Day Care closed and she wishes to return the property to a home. She tried to sell it for four years and one buyer backed out. Vote was 5-0.

Public Hearing #3 dealt with the rezoning of 605 S Main St from R-3 to B-3. When rezoned it would make the entire block B-3 and would be more attractive to future business. Vote was 5-0.

The action item is continued from the last meeting which was tabled. A Conditional Use Permit is being request for 504 S 1st for a convenience store. The owner revised his proposed site plan to get approval from the P and Z. He reduced the building size to 1750 square feet and has 7 parking spaces. He added fencing and fence high lighting for security. He also said delivery will not be an issue. Mr Martin told the owner he received four letters in opposition to the permit. There was a motion to forward to city council approval but it failed to get a 2nd and it died on the table. Then there was a motion to reject the Conditional Use Permit and send to council. It passed 3-2.

The last action item was for the Ranches at Live Oak. It is located in the Extra Territorial Jurisdiction of Copperas Cove. There are requesting a final Plat for nine lots on a 21.56 acre plot of land. Mr Dewald was present for questions. It passed 5-0.

This is your summary of almost three hours of city meetings and function on Monday. 

Fathom Audit

Copperas Cove Utilities Billing Audit - By Weaver and Tidwell 
5 Feb 2019


The Copperas Cove City Council received its requested Utilities Billing Audit, conducted by Weaver and Tidwell LLP. The audit covered a period from 1 April 2017 - 1 Sept 2018. Weaver and Tidwell identified approximately 14,000 individual accounts and approximately 242,000 meter reads during this period.

The procedures performed are as follows:

-Selected 150 individual accounts, allocated across seniors, residential, and commercial groups for testing.

-Compared the amount billed to the preceding and subsequent months and identified any accounts that have a variance greater than 5%.

-Recalculated the amount billed according to the fee schedule.

-Obtained the total volume amount billed and identified any variance greater than 10%.


To match the 1% requested by the City Council, they selected 141 accounts across the city to audit.
Of those 141 accounts:
-123 were residential accounts
-13 were residential-senior accounts
-5 were business accounts


None of the accounts audited showed any mis-calculations of consumption. Of the 141 accounts, 64 had variances of more than 10% from one month to another - which isn't out of the ordinary. 134 of the accounts were recalculated within .01. Of the remaining 7 that weren't, 6 were due to either a shorter/longer billing period depending on what cycle they were on or they were due to Council approved rate changes. 1 account was shown to be an error with their senior citizen discount not being fully applied. That wound up being a recurring error, and one that the auditor will be working with the city to correct for that customer. May - June showed the biggest billing variance across all the accounts due to the billing dates for that period falling on 1 June and 29 June.

In addition to the audit, Weaver and Tidwell presented some extra information that they thought could be useful to the city.

Disconnect Notices:
-None issued between April - June 2017. They believe this may have inadvertently caused problems by letting people get used to not paying their bill and not have anything to worry about. This may have started a domino effect for some customers who now struggle to get their bill paid on time.

-Issued 1-2 days past the bill due date. These notify that the disconnect will be 10 days after the notice is mailed out. (Editors note: Keep in mind - that 10 days includes any weekends if it's mailed out on a Thursday/Friday as well as holidays if the mail is down. It IS possible for you to get a disconnect notice in the mail on a Monday afternoon and have it tell you you're due for disconnect the following Tuesday.)

-No disconnects during Thanksgiving week, Christmas week, or New Years day.

High Consumption Notices:
-Received via email and phone call
-Approximately 40% of our accounts are active online. No online accounts will not receive an email disconnect notice. This presents a problem because phone calls are automated, and a lot of people instinctively do not answer automatic phone calls that come across as spam on caller ID, or they hang up as soon as they hear the automated voice.

Audit discussion by City Manager and City Council members:
-Ryan Haverlah started the conversation off by bringing up that the city did not retain a proper amount of staff to know what would be needed to work with Fathom - which was cause of a lot of the problems with accounts. This put the city in a reactive mode. Once we get our utility staffing back up, that will help us regain footing in a proactive role. However, during the issues the city has had, Fathom has been very responsive in helping city staff.
-Joann Courtland stated that this "is not enough data". Citizens are still coming forth with issues and we need to do everything we can to help them. With this audit, "we hit the bread, but we want to get to the meat" of the problem.
-Charlie Youngs would like to see the city keep the auditor on hand until the city staff gets better and can start doing in house audits. To that, the auditor replied that they could certainly do more work if needed.
-Marc Payne asked if Fathom can do any tracking of the types of problems coming in - even if it's just a paper next to each phone with general types of problems in columns, and the operator quickly puts a check in a column as it is called in.
-Dan Yancey stated the call centers don't have the time to track problem types so we need to find a different way. Jay Manning stepped in and said that 1% isn't a bad number, and that there aren't any real problems being highlighted in the audit. With the old system, a lot of times the meter reads were averaged out. Those problems that were ignored because the reading was being averaged out are now having a spotlight put on them, grabbing peoples attention via their wallets. More audits won't do any good - we should focus on our known problems for now. It is in our and Fathoms best interest to work together. For Fathom, this is even a PR issue as it won't look good for them if a city backs out due to poor service. He believes we can work together and fix all the issues going on.
-Ryan Haverlah will start categorizing and focusing on complaints, however a lot of the initial problems have been worked out.
-Fred Chavez agrees with Jay Manning's comments. He wants to compare our numbers to Fathoms as well as look at what they consider appropriate standards of customer service vs our standards.

The audit was not open for public comment, however you may comment on it at the citizens forum. With that, the discussion ended and moved on to the next agenda item.