Making sausage at City Hall

“The making of laws like the making of sausages, is not a pretty sight.” Otto von Bismark

 

Council members present were Rockie Gilley, Sandra Lee, Jana Joplin and Kelly Turner along with Mayor Brian Johnson. Absent, due to illness, was Liz Carrington.

 

The meeting did draw a crowd because the agenda did show a possible decision on new water/sewer rates with three options to consider. The meeting itself was dominated by a staff presentation on the water rate issue along with public input. In the end, action was delayed.

There was a lot of information presented and discussed, enough to emphasize the fact there is no simple solution to this complex issue. It became apparent that as the meeting progressed there would not be a definitive decision that night.

 

Worksession presentation on Open Meetings Act …

 

For those not familiar with the act, it delineates what constitutes a meeting and when and how the public is informed of the meeting. When a quorum of members of an elected governing body, in the case of the city council it is three or more, a meeting is constituted. It must be announced before hand with a published agenda. There are exceptions and additional regulations that go into the Open Meetings Act. See Government Code

 

Regular meeting …

At the regular meeting, there were two proclamations issued with one recognizing July as Watch Your Car Month in support of the Tri-County Auto Theft Taskforce and the second recognizing July 22 as Lorretta Hulce Day in Kennedale, the day Mrs. Hulce would be celebrating her 100th birthday.

The consent agenda contained several items that were removed for further discussion and were dealt with quickly with the exception of the authorization of the city manager to enter in agreement with Professional Auditing Services (PAS) for conducting the annual audit.

Auditing firm approved after discussion ?

New Finance Director Brady Olsen recommended to staying with the same auditing firm, at least for this year, because of the recent turn over in staff at the city, saying that that the firm would be familiar with the city?s accounts, something on which the new staff is still educating themselves.

City council member Rocky Gilley had questions about how long that the city had used the same auditing firm and what is considered best practice. It was stated that the city had used the PAS for 13 years.

 

After further discussion City Manager George Campbell did acknowledged that it would probably be best to put out a request of bids given the number of years, but felt that under the present time constraints and the turnover in the city staff this year, it would be easier to use a firm that was familiar with the city?s accounts.

 

A request for bid at this point could cause of a delay of up to 60 days and would run the risk of not getting the audit done in time. He also felt some assurance that the PAS had just hired a new senior vice-president who would provide ?new eyes? on the city?s accounts. Next year, Campbell said that if it was the Council wish they would start the process earlier and put out for bids.

A motion was made by Council member Kelly Turner to accept the staff recommendation. It was seconded by Sandra Lee and was passed by a vote of 3-1 with Rocky Gilley casting the no vote.

Water/sewer rate options ?

The biggest item on the agenda was the consideration of water rates with 3 different options presented. Action on the item was preceded by a presentation by new Kennedale Finance Director Brady Olsen. This covered the bulk of the regular meeting and it provided an in-depth review of the city water/sewer rate issue.

There were three options; Option One – No Change; Option 2 – Change as proposed by Kennedale resident Cathy Brown; and, Option Three – Change as propose by City Staff. The following is the slide presentation as presented at the meeting.

 

 

It became apparent early on that this was not an issue the council was comfortable in making at this time since the budget figures for the coming year were not available. This fact was said multiple times as the review and discussion proceeded during the more than 2 hour long meeting.

 

In the end, a motion was made by Turner, seconded by Joplin that any decision on this issue be delayed until after the council had a chance to see the budget. The motion passed again by 3-1 with Gilley voting nay.

 

No good news for either side of this issue …

There has been not good news in some time for either side on this issue. Since the current rate was set in September 2016 a number of things have occurred that put the city in somewhat of a turmoil including:

• experiencing a turnover in key city staff including the city manager and finance director;
• losing a majority of city council members;
• the announcement by the City of Fort Worth of a 12% increase in cost charged to Kennedale for water purchases;
• and, the discovery of a $1.6 million math error in the water fund that gave the city council the false impression that there was more money in the fund than was actually there and leading the council to approved expenditures which only drained the fund further.

For the new council member elected on the promise of rolling back the water rates, the task has become immensely more difficult, actually nearly impossible in the short term. Mayor Pro Tem Jan Joplin now speaks of moving ?water/sewer rates back slowly.?

 

Budget workshop August 11 …

 

The council has a budget workshop set up in two weeks to get a chance to review and discuss the proposed budget. The date set is for Friday, August 11 beginning at 8:30 a.m. in Council Chambers at Kennedale City Hall.