The Early City Council conducted its public hearing of the 2022-23 fiscal year tax rate Tuesday night. The proposed rate features a near 30% decrease which is made possible in part that the increase in sales taxes in Early.

For more information on the tax rate, click here.

In the matters of new business, the City ratified the Early Municipal’s Development District agreement with Volkert Inc. for engineering services on Parkway Drive.

“We felt that this engineering was necessary, so that hopefully we can get this property in a soluble situation,” said City Councilman Benny Allcorn.

In the Administrator’s Report, the City has been working on the new Town Center Boardwalk. So far in the construction mentioned, most of the curbs are installed, the aisles in the parking lot need to be finished, and there is a need to pour some of the radiuses on the curbs. The next implementations will be the sidewalks, lighting, and the end of the paving construction is set to be by the end of September, according to City Administrator Tony Aaron.

Aaron took most of the meeting to discuss various budget concerns that the City Council needed to address, especially for major developments happening in the City of Early.

“Town Center Lake, we were scheduled to receive bids on Monday,” Aaron said. “Late last Friday we had a couple of questions that came in, some requests for information that we needed to work out with the engineers. So we put off that bid process until next Monday at 10 a.m. and that will be before the council for consideration.”

The questions were some concrete material that would have to be excavated and transported that could possibly cost at least $100,000. The City worked with the engineers to shrink their work in that specific area in question to save money.

“In the way the bid was put out, if we would have gone forward that was not really a way for them to separate out the cost, so it just required us to extend [the bid],” Aaron said. “We do feel we got four or five contractors that are actively asking questions about the project so sometimes they back out at the very last minute.”

The City expects some more competitive bids coming in. 

The main item in the meeting was the Budget Workshop where the Council focused on the Town Center Project, funds in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) budget, The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) budget, and the overall general budget that the City Administrator needed to revisit.

In the summary sheet, “basically our revenues are about flat for this year’s budget projection. Sales tax kind of overtook the loss of any property tax revenue from the rate reduction, expenditures are up about four percent, and then you can see our total ending fund balance is down about 58%. But that is due to money that we had saved that we are going to be spending on projects,” Aaron said.

Aaron then moved the focus to the budget around The Lake Project specifically. All the elements involved, including construction, are expected to be around $400,000.

“We had budgeted that for this current budget year, but we’re not going to expand that so we’re moving it into the next year,” said Aaron. This has already been approved for the 2021-2022 budget.

Aside from that, $50,000 was granted by Texas Parks and Wildlife from the Habitat Angler Access Program that is for “the stabilization of the shoreline and putting a habitat in there.”

Then there are the two fishing piers that will be funded with that grant with another $50,000 from Texas Parks and Wildlife; $100,000 total. In the general fund, for the fish habitat and piers, $95,000 was the City’s match for that project. $30,000 will be required for the irrigation pipe for the lake. Sidewalks will be a total of $300,000 for the concrete work. Then the electrical lighting and services are $100,000. Those services come from the Municipal Development District and ARPA funding that gave a portion to the sidewalks. Funding for the project also comes from the LCRA Outdoor Classroom Grant given to the city of Early. It was $50,000, which the city had to match with $25,000.

Additionally, a dog park in the Town Center Project is said to be funded by a private donor. But the funding and name will not be mentioned yet. The City Administrator noted that it will be an impressive dog park. Batting cages were already budgeted in last year’s budget.

Boardwalk construction resumes next month. The construction of the boardwalk will cover a third of what they are building, but the piers have to be put in while the lake is still dry. The public restroom will be budgeted at $100,000. It was more expensive to bring in a public restroom. But building one on sight was cheaper.T he recreation site was discussed as requests for a playground will be looked at and considered in the next two budget years according to the City Administrator.

The Council then discussed ARPA funds. The City of Early has approved and purchased and awarded a new irrigation barge for the West Water Treatment Plant, along with a grinder pump which is $30,000.

Furthermore, the City is proposing “several line items to purchase equipment items for the fire department.” Those were in the fire department’s budget in general funds but needed more and put several ARPA funds to free up the general budget. Also in the planning is building a firewall between the fire department and public work side and the shop side. The original design of the building needs walls that are sealed between the public works side and the fire department.

Then what was brought up was a water meter issue and replacement. The City has 1,300 automated underground meters. “1,000 send radio frequency signals to devices that are called gateways. The other three hundred that are being cycled out are cellular based devices,” said the City Administrator. “Radio technology is not going to be supported in the future.” The City hopes to replace the rest overtime to cellular based devices. It will be $300 per meter.

The City Administrator moved onto the $100,000 Crescent Street Project. It is a sewer project Early originally wanted to do in house. But the Texas Water Development Board told the City that they had to hire contractors due to regulatory issues. TWDB will not let the city dig water manholes nor dig deeper than five feet.

The $100,000 from ARPA should pay for the materials for the rest of the project. “We’ll buy the material, store it in our shop, we’re now done with the obligation to the Water Development Board Fund, and we can dig the rest of the sewer line ourselves in phases,” said Aaron.

Changing gears, Aaron moved on to talk about the Capital Improvement Plan. This is the city of Early’s large project calendar for the next five years.

“This will get adopted with the budget and it just kind of lays out what our major capital improvements will be over the next five years,” said Aaron.

The 5 year Capital Improvement Plan has a projected dollar amount of $12,641,000 over five years.

The City Administrator then began to discuss budget line items and budget departments. But he pointed out a particular department. “We had previously discussed that we were not going to add new positions,” said the City Administrator on the fire department. “We were just going to do part-time positions. We were going to have four full time and keep the rest part time.”

City Administrator Aaron pointed out a particular flaw with the fire department, and why the city is trying to add two more full time positions. “The part-time show up when they want to and don’t show up when they don’t want to. We don’t have a lot of leverage to go ‘hey if you’re not showing up we can’t use you,’ because we need firefighters,” said Aaron. “But what happens is, it’s creating overtime to backfill those part-time spots, and so we’ve got, our budget is on pace, but just, let’s limit the number of part time. Let’s go ahead and make two more full time. Our overtime is way more predictable and leaves us with six total firefighting positions. That would guarantee us two twenty-four hours a day.”

The city can “pay for that, and stay within the budget of what [they’re] actually going to spend anyway,” Aaron added. “The next step I think for the growth of the fire department is probably the safer grant, and that’s where you get money from FEMA. You can add firefighters and they’ll guarantee their salary for three years and they’re idea is over the next three years you build those positions in your budget.”

Aaron briefly mentioned management issues that need to be fixed. 

Finally on the budget agenda, the City Administrator presented that “the school district has been talking about a resource officer for the school.”

Already preliminary conversations have been done with Chief Mercer. City Administrator Aaron thinks “that they are to the point that they are ready to fund that position or participate in the funding of that position. So we’ll be looking at that within this next budget year.” Aaron added, “It is one of those things, when we or the school commit to it, it will continue to grow. We won’t ever back away from it.”

To end the meeting, the City Council had an executive session, where they reviewed Aaron’s contract, and and offered an extension as City Administrator.

[Story by Jacob Lehrer]