This year the last Saturday in July is on the 28th and that’s why, if you look at the meetings section of the city’s web page you will find a listing for a "Kyle Special City Council Meeting" scheduled for 8 a.m. on that day. But this year, that special 8 a.m. meeting on the last Saturday in July is going to include more than just a discussion of the manager’s proposed budget. It’s going to include annexations as well.
According to notices that appeared in this week’s edition of the Hays Free Press, the council will host the second public hearings on four proposed annexations totaling 259.59 acres. Granted, a total of 259.59 acres is not a lot to annex — about .4 of a square mile — so an 8 a.m. on a Saturday time is not going to inconvenience that many — if any — citizens who want to testify at said hearings. But, still, it’s interesting that the second public hearings on these four annexations will be held during what normally is a meeting reserved exclusively to discuss the proposed budget.
Which brings me back to the first of the two topics I said above I would return to, specifically, the way the council conducts citizen comments. These are always held at the beginning of each council meeting and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if the council really desired to solicit meaningful comments from its citizens it would also include on its agenda a citizens comment period at the end of the meetings as well. And the upcoming annexation-budget "Kyle Special City Council Meeting" on the 28th is a perfect example of why a second comments section should be included. Although an agenda for this meeting hasn’t been posted it’s reasonable to assume it will feature, most likely, in this order 1. Citizens comments period; 2. Annexation public hearings and 3. Budget presentation. But how in heaven’s name are citizens going to be able to comment on the most important item of this meeting — the proposed budget — before they have any idea of what’s in the budget proposal? And they won’t know that until after the one and only citizens comments period has ended. This is compounded by the fact that the Kyle City Council is composed of individuals who, by design, do not take the initiative they should to inform constituents of the contents of the city manager’s proposed budget. I have spent the last four years attempting to shame council members into hosting budget town hall meetings, but to no avail. These folks feel no obligation towards keeping their constituents informed on the most important decisions they will make as council members or to seek input from their constituents about those decisions. I was talking with Jerry Hendrix, the city’s chief of staff, yesterday on a completely different subject (specifically mobility management when the city reaches a population over 100,000, expected in 22 years) and he said the city would do what it could to facilitate such budget town hall meetings — going so far as to design and produce a budget presentation slide show that could be featured at the meetings — but no council member has even inquired about one. Of course it can be argued that the council will hold four additional meetings on the budget — public hearings on Aug. 14 and Aug. 21, and formal budget adoption readings on Aug. 28 and Sept. 4 — and the public can make their opinions on the budget known on these occasions. But these meetings require the citizenry to come to the council; why does the council feel it doesn’t need to take the message out to the citizenry?
What makes this even more criminal is that every so often a council member will don their dunce cap, swallow another stupid pill and proclaim "We need to make sure our citizens are aware of this," whatever the particular "this" happens to be at that moment. They seem to think there’s this magic wand that is somehow going to be waved infusing widespread knowledge into the cranium of every resident in the city. Don’t they realize that they — the council members themselves — are the citizens’ link to their city government, the conduit for the transfer of information and knowledge? That one of the principle things they were elected to do was to keep those folks who voted for them informed about what’s going on at City Hall? How badly they have shirked this responsibility would be laughable if it didn’t border on criminally negligent. Unfortunately, they look upon public service as an opportunity to grandstand, but not to serve and inform.
The argument I have heard from one or more council members against having such a townhall meeting is that not many constituents would show up, which is tantamount to the ball player saying he doesn’t want to step up to the plate because he knows he’s going to strike out anyway. But it’s true. If a council member doesn’t put some effort into making the meeting a success, it might not be one. And, at first, perhaps only a dozen folks might show up to the meeting. But I’ve seen this happen many times before. Word starts getting around about how valuable these meetings are and then two dozen show up at the next one because "it’s the place to be." Then four dozen come to the one after that and before you know it, you have SRO crowds. Not only that, two council members could jointly co-sponsor one or more such meetings and, with each working their own constituency, attract a more significant crowd than by going it alone. So, yes, it does take effort to make these things work, but "effort" seems to be a dirty word at council chambers.
The second thing I said I would get back around to is the way the council agenda is arranged and, for once, the council has almost done a better job of arranging the agenda for this Tuesday’s meeting than at any time I can remember. My question is whether this might be just a one-off success tied to the proposed annexations.
Like I said earlier, the meeting on the 28th is for the second public hearings on the proposed annexations, and, if you’re wondering when the first of those public hearings are supposed to come along, the answer to that is they are on Tuesday’s agenda which correctly groups them all together under the heading of "Public Hearing" (to be grammatically correct, it should be plural "Hearings," but, hey, this is a step in the right direction here.) There will, of course, be one public hearing for each of the four proposed annexations and, like I said, I don’t expect them to attract that many speakers because it’s not going to directly affect that many people. I expect Lila Knight to speak at least one of the hearings to once again say the city needs an Annexation Plan which, in the case of these annexations, is not true because, as Section 43.052 (h)(1) of the Local Texas Government Code clearly states an Annexation Plan is not required if the area to be annexed "contains fewer than 100 separate tracts of land on which one or more residential dwellings are located on each tract." That means these four areas are definitely exempt from needing an Annexation Plan.
So it’s not that the public hearings will draw any meaningful contributions, it’s simply the fact they are categorized as such on the council’s agenda. But, wait. As I wrote above "the council has almost done a better job of arranging the agenda." It seems that even though there is a section on the agenda devoted to "Public Hearing" (sic), there is a rogue public hearing appearing all by its lonesome as Item 11 on the agenda. Why isn’t this item included with the other public hearings? Someone from the city will make the excuse that Item 11 has to do with a proposed natural gas franchise and not an annexation, but that’s exactly what that will be — an excuse, not a valid reason.
All future agendas should have all the public hearings grouped together and appearing on the agenda immediate following the Consent Agenda items, if there is a Consent Agenda, or, as the annexation ones are on Tuesday’s agenda, immediately following the Citizens Comments period. In that way, those citizens coming to council to speak at one of the public hearings (1) will know generally where on the agenda the hearings will appear at every meeting without having to actually review the agenda and (2), and even more importantly, those citizens wishing to speak won’t have to sit through a lot of junk waiting around for the public hearing during which they wish to speak. Will the council take this sensible step? Who knows. The fact that these council members refuse to keep their constituents informed about the most important function the council must perform — reviewing and approving a budget each year — indicates they only pay lip service to the concept of caring for their constituents.
A couple of other items worth noting on Tuesday’s council agenda:
- It appears work is finally about to commence on the North Burleson Road bond project. Items 8-10 all involve work on or around North Burleson Road. The biggie, Item 8, is the authorization of $6.9 million for the construction of a new 42-foot-wide roadway, reconstruction and widening of North Burleson Street, water line relocations, wastewater line relocations, structure improvements, storm drain improvements, grading, base, pavement, curb and gutter, pedestrian improvements, illumination, construction of a new 8-inch wastewater line and 12-inch water line, and signing and markings for approximately 1.47 mile of roadway. Item 9 authorizes the spending of $613,244.73 for the construction of a new 42-foot-wide roadway, structure improvements, storm drain improvements, grading, base, pavement, curb and gutter, pedestrian improvements, signing and markings for approximately 800 feet of roadway extending Marketplace from Burleson to the I-35 frontage road. Item 10 authorizes the expenditure of an additional $73,344 for "construction administration, review, analysis, correction of contractor supplied material specifications, and revisions to plans during construction for N. Burleson Street and Marketplace Extension."
- The city is taking one more step in making toward making the roller hockey pavilion a reality with the first reading of an ordinance authorizing City Manager Scott Sellers to negotiate and enter into a professional services agreement for the design of the cement pavilion; authorizing the use of a Buy Board contractor to construct the cement hockey pavilion; and authorizing and directing Sellers to negotiate and bring back for city council an agreement with a Buy Board contractor for the construction of the pavilion. "As planning of this community project is getting underway, having the engineering firm and the contractor involved from the very beginning will save the city time and money," according to the agenda. "This process meets (the) state's and city's purchase policies for competitive bids. For a unique project involving many volunteers, in-kind donations and several different construction-industry participants, this is a preferred method to deliver a quality project."
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