Council needs to double sessions

(Updated at 5:30 p.m. March 3 to include new information about the city's public transportation initiative)
It’s becoming painfully obvious following last night’s five-plus hour marathon City Council meeting, only 13 minutes of which were comprised of an executive session, the city must seriously consider meeting four Tuesday’s a month instead of two, with the meetings on the first and third Tuesdays reserved for presentations and council member-generated considerations, and those on the second and fourth Tuesdays set aside for voting on specific agenda items and public hearings.

The only reason council members could oppose this idea is because they place more importance on themselves than a commitment to the city. "I just don’t have the time to meet four times a month,"will be the response. My answer to that then is simply resign your seat and let it be occupied by someone pledged to dedicate the time and energy required to serving the best interests of the citizens of Kyle.

Look at council member Shane Arabie, to take just one example. I can’t remember if he has ever missed a council meeting. Not only that, he’ll usually be an observer at the weekly Planning & Zoning Commission meetings and he regularly dropped in during the Charter Review Commission’s deliberations, neither of which he tried to influence; he simply attended to learn and observe other parts of the legislative process of which he is a part.

Because each weekly council meeting would consume less time than the current bi-weekly one, the total time obligation would probably not be that much greater anyway. It would simply mean two more trips to and from City Hall each month. That’s not a deal killer, by any stretch of the imagination.

This city is growing and is becoming more complex and, as a result, city council agendas are going to grow both in size and complexity along with the city. At some point, the council is going to be forced to go to meeting four times a month. Why not get ahead of the game?

If such a structure had been in place last night, the council would have had one presentation meeting lasting approximately two hours and an agenda meeting consuming three.

By 10:30 or 11 p.m., council members are naturally going to be suffering from some degree of mental fatigue at best or wondering "When in heaven’s name are we going to end this thing?" at worst and during these times their concentration and attention to detail might not be as acute as it would if their minds were less fatigued. Council member Becky Selbera simply left last night around the 10:30 p.m. mark. To put it simply, shorter meetings lead to better decision-making and improved decorum because, as everyone knows, tempers are more likely to get frayed the longer these meetings drag on.

Like I said, there’s a good chance (and, admittedly, I have not polled individual council members on this, but I am seeking their reaction) many council members might oppose this idea but that opposition would be only because they are placing their own self interest above the best interests of the citizens they are supposed to be representing.

And as long as I’m trying to change the world, I would also like to see all public hearings scheduled at a definite time on either the agenda (say immediately after the citizen comment period) or on the clock (either 7:30 or 8 p.m.) so citizens know each meeting exactly when to come to council chambers if they desire to participate in the public hearings.

I would also like to see the form required to be completed by those who speak during the citizen comment period be posted somewhere prominently on the City’s web site with the ability to complete it and submit it on line as well. If those forms are routed directly to the city secretary’s office, someone in that office can register those individuals and give to the mayor ahead of the start of the meeting. It would not cover everyone wishing to speak, but it could help in the process.

What follows are some of the highlights from Tuesday’s marathon session:

• Surprisingly, there seemed to be no opposition to the idea of creating a Stormwater Utility that could result in as much as a $4 a month increase to every homeowner’s water bill. Of course, it could be argued that homeowners would be more than happy to pay what amounts to a $48-per-year tax increase if (1) it means protecting them from the ravaging floods that devastated parts of Kyle last Halloween, floods caused in large part from clogged and improperly maintained stormwater drains and (2) these homeowners learned that, unlike the current property tax structure, the heaviest burden for paying these fees would fall on those who own the properties containing large parking lots and other impervious surfaces. The council decided that the city should develop a budget for the utility, develop a fee schedule that would satisfy that budget and then bring it back to council in a time frame that would allow for the requisite public hearings on establishing the utility and including it as part of the city’s overall fiscal year 2016-17 budget which will be approved sometime in September.
• Considered a proposal that was met with, shall we say, a "lukewarm reception," to have the city join the Central Texas Clean Air Coalition. Kyle is the largest city in the region that is not a member of the coalition and would be the only municipal member to join the coalition as a Supporting (second tier) member instead of a General (first tier) member. The stated purpose of the coalition is five-fold with the number one goal being "Facilitate the development, adoption, and implementation of clean air plans to maintain compliance with the federal eight-hour ozone standard for the Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties." Here’s my problem with the Clean Air Coalition: There’s only one way to achieve that goal and that is to reduce the number of vehicles on the roads of those counties. And the closest initiative the Clean Air Coalition has to achieve such a reduction is "Expedited Permitting for Mixed Use, Transit-Oriented or In-Fill Development" and only two members, the cities of Bastrop and Elgin, have initiated such a program. The council was concerned that participating in the coalition might put the city at a competitive disadvantage for business development and referred the idea to the Economic Development Committee for additional input. In an earlier vote, the council rejected 4-3 the idea of joining the coalition with council members Diane Hervol. Damon Fogley and Daphne Tenorio being the ones that thought the city could benefit from becoming a supporting member.
• Human Resources Director Sandra Duran outlined a series of revisions in the city’s personnel policy that brings it in accordance with much of the rest of the civilized world and will put the city in a better position to recruit top-notch talent. It also skillfully addresses the issues surrounding employees and the recently enacted Open Carry law in a way that does what it can to keep City Hall from being the site of a revised gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The council approved the measure 6-0 (Selbera had left the meeting prior to this discussion). Ironically, the issue Duran raised that received the most pushback involved telecommunity and flex time work schedules, ideas designed to promote, among other things, improved air quality and the pushback came from council member Tenorio who was the primary advocate of joining the Clean Air Coalition and a companion measure involving vehicle idling in the city limits which she withdrew when she felt she didn’t have enough support among her colleagues for the measure.
• Approved a resolution allowing Kyle/Buda Taxi to operate public transportation services for Kyle residents. According to Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix, the pilot program is scheduled to begin Tuesday, March 15, and operate on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There was sentiment among some council members to have the service run on Mondays and Wednesdays, but, according to Hendrix, that didn't work out because "Mondays are very busy for Kyle/Buda taxi." The service will provide in-town transportation on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. and once-per-day roundtrips on those days to Austin and San Marcos. Hendrix promised additional information will be available soon on the city's website.
• Authorized, 6-1 an award that will provide a long-awaited extension of Goforth Road that will finally connect it with Kyle Parkway, eliminating the need to make that Dacy Lane dogleg to get from Goforth to the Seton Medical Center area. Funding will come from the 2013 Bond sales, meaning the city essentially gets six road projects out of the deal, one more than the sale originally envisioned.
• Held the first of two public hearings on a pair of annexations, one voluntary and one involuntary. Needless to say, not a soul came to speak during the voluntary annexation public hearing. However, 11 spoke at the first one and all of them railed against the idea of being annexed. Tenorio objected to the opening of that public meeting and Mayor Todd Webster violated rules of procedure by calling for a vote on the matter without opening the floor for debate which would have given Tenorio an opportunity to state for the record why she opposed holding the hearings. Webster later apologized for what he called an "oversight" on his part. "Her objection just caught me by surprise and I wasn’t thinking properly," he said. Tenorio subsquently said her objections were based on "Whether we could legally hold a public hearing when some people didn’t get a letter notifying them of the hearing and whether any of these homes were under a MUD because that brings in a whole other set of legalities." She also said when the last annexation occurred, the proposal went before Planning and Zoning for its approval and she was wondering why that procedure hadn’t been repeated.
• The council also voted 6-1 (Tenorio voting no) to appeal an attorney general's ruling requiring the city to divulge what it considers privileged information as part of a wrongful termination action. And I'll leave it at that.