The first order of business at Monday’s meeting of the City of Shoreacres City Council was to present a service recognition award to former Police Chief David Newman, thanking him for his many years of service to the city. What this council did to that man is unconscionable and you could tell that they were embarrassed by it as they sat watching the sham presentation. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Citizen Comments
David Gerany spoke about speeding on Miramar. He said that it looks like there are fewer efforts to control speeders. He suggested doing speed control differently – at the present time police are visible and people slow down. He suggested doing as Pasadena does and that it could be a large revenue source for the city.
Administrative Reports
The cell tower behind Public Works is being upgraded with fiber optics and back up generating power.
Round two of the street upgrades will be complete on 11/6/13.
The grant from Homeland Security for radio systems has been received.
City Administrator Stall also discussed the Community Rating System for flood insurance. He thinks that FEMA is going to accept the application and if they do, policies written after October 2014 would be eligible for a 5{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} discount.
Stall also went over the city’s financial position. Between the General and Utility Funds, the city has $151,767.81 in cash on hand, plus another $53,454.82 in customer utility deposits. The Texpool reserve fund as expected has $954k and we have another $250k in CD’s.
Stall claimed that we had “excess revenue” because property tax collections were $13k above budget – but failed to mention that the budget was in the red to begin with.
Police Management Review
Interim Chief Massey went over his report. You can read it online – it is mostly boilerplate stuff, the key being that he got rid of Chief Newman and recommends hiring another officer to replace the one that quit after the debacle at the Yacht club. He claimed that morale among the officers has already increased and offered his services in hiring a new chief. After reading through his report, our best option would probably be to ask LaPorte to annex us. The next option would be to contract out our police needs to the Harris County Sheriff’s department. We are already in a huge financial bind, adding to our police department is going to be difficult.
Business
8.2 – New water and sewer rates. After a lengthy discussion, council unanimously approved Alderman Schnell’s ordinance changing the way the city bills for water. The sliding scale for water usage changes a bit and there is now a sliding scale for sewer. A few homeowners will see a decrease – the “widow’ that lives alone and doesn’t use more than 2,000 gallons a month. Most homeowners will see a slight increase. If you use 5,000 gallons a month, your water/sewer portion of the bill will go from $44 to $50. Gross revenue is projected to increase approximately $36k per year.
8.4 – dispatch contract with LaPorte. Unanimous approval on changing from Lakeview to LaPorte. Alderman Moses explained in detail why this was a good move, even though the cost increase was significant.
8.5 – unanimous approval to gain access to the City of Houston’s emergency radio system. Their system will be adopted by Harris County as well.
8.7 – Alderman Schnell asked about the city not adhering to the ordinance pertaining to drug testing after accidents. Stall said that he used his discretion at this time and did not send employees for drug testing for minor incidents. In my opinion, after 35 years in managing safety programs, any OSHA recordable accident should be drug tested and any accident resulting in damage to equipment or vehicles should be drug tested.