The Simonton City Council will hold its THIRD budget meeting, beginning at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, August 27, 2024. 

Overview:
This will be the third of what was originally proposed to be four meetings and it will continue the annual budgeting process for the city. 

In setting the far-future date for this meeting, the Mayor appears to have very intentionally “skipped” the “regular” meeting date. This would have otherwise had this meeting held on Tuesday, August 20, 2024. Further, using the “regular” meeting date would have allowed the City Council more time to consider their budget as well as their regular city business items without having their meeting time “compressed” due to skipping an entire meeting date altogether.

The City Council’s “Regular” meeting has not (at the time of this writing) been officially announced. However, the  Mayor has indicated that their “regular” city business would also be held at the future meeting (August 27’th presumed) that will follow this particular “budget” meeting. This will potentially make for another extremely long and potentially pressure-filled evening indeed.

It is not clear as to why the Mayor did not schedule a “Budget meeting” and the “Regular meeting” for August 20’th. After all, with so little progress having been made to consider, adjust, and finalize the current budget elements, and with a legal deadline time crunch looming, it only would have made sense that the Mayor would want to meet at every opportunity – if for no other reason than to get their budgeting work done sooner – rather than later.

Time will tell as to whether this is a smart move or not for the Mayor. Make no mistake, the Mayor has made it her decision on her own.

For reference:
The Budget must be adopted and published prior to the beginning of the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which begins on October 1, 2024.

To be clear, the city budget can be initially proposed by the Mayor. However, it is up to the City Council to make any and all changes to any proposed budget as they see fit as they adopt the final version of their budget. In this way, the City Council (not the Mayor) establishes the maximum that can be spent throughout the fiscal year.

At the initial meeting, the Mayor indicated that the city no longer qualifies for the “de minimis” tax rate. She proposed setting a tax rate of just shy of .31 cents per hundred of valuation. The Mayor, having made no attempt to propose a lower lower tax rate, pointed out that this is the maximum amount that the City can assess without asking the voters to approve a tax rate hike themselves. 

While seeking to build a consensus among the City Council for a .31 cent per hundred tax rate, she found no support. Instead, two council members appeared to want a lower rate than the Mayor had proposed and two council members said that they needed more time to consider the Mayor’s proposal.

The Mayor, acknowledged that she had been unable to get Simonton’s road repairs on the County’s work schedule.

The Mayor did, however, go into some detail regarding the anticipated costs of adopting “zoning” in Simonton. According to the Mayor, the cost for zoning Simonton would include an estimated $200,000 in engineering and legal fees with a total overall cost to the taxpayers of up to $300,000.

There was no mention of other added costs or benefits for the taxpayers, such as deep ditch mowing. 

The Mayor did state that in her proposed budget she was allowing for her plan to hire a full time city administrator, although she did not state the amount for doing so.

Interested parties should review the agenda to better understand the issues to be discussed. 

The public is encouraged to attend and to participate in sharing their thoughts and concerns via “Public Comments”.

CLICK HERE for the Budget Meeting Agenda on the City’s website.

See you there!

Watch the meeting live or watch it later
As before, I plan on live-streaming the meeting via my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SimontonTexas/ 

In the event that I am unable to stream the meeting, I will post the video as quickly as possible. Of course, it will be presented prominently on this website as well.

Important Notice and Disclosure:
I do not edit and have never intentionally edited a Simonton City Council meeting except to add titles where necessary, to exclude portions of the video immediately prior to and immediately following the official meeting, and where personal attacks are used to intentionally harrass, slander, defame, harm, injure, or otherwise attack persons in the gallery, including myself as I will not be party to such behavior. 

Consequently, I reserve the right, at my sole discretion, to silence, redact or fully remove portions of the final video where any person intentionally uses the videos I produce as their personal platform, wherein the video record may otherwise be used in an effort to create and a record of or otherwise document any personal attack on any member of the gallery, including myself.

Note, however, when comments are made that relate specifically to the city and their business, I fully intend to ensure that those comments are heard.

Regarding Internet Bandwidth Drop Outs:
Any “skips” that may occur during a live-stream, causing the video to be interrupted momentarily, are beyond my control and occur when the bandwidth from my internet provider drops out during a live stream broadcast. These are going to happen from time to time and are unavoidable when wireless internet is used.

In general, as the public will see by the online record, in order to provide the most complete recording possible with the best audio I am able to provide, I have begun posting the full, higher-quality video from my video camera on YouTube the following day or as soon as possible after the meeting.i