On Tuesday, Sept. 3, the Whitesboro City Council took a vote and approved the proposed tax rate for 2025, which is an increase of 30 percent for the city’s tax from the current rate.
The tax rate is currently set at $0.399. The proposed tax rate is $0.519739 per $100 of valuation. During the council meeting, City Administrator Julie Arrington said she prepared several tax rate options that showed the effects of the rates on the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025. The lowest option for the council to choose from was $0.499133, followed by $0.519739, $0.599133 and $0.617003.
Arrington said anything selected higher than $0.519739 can trigger an election.
Mayor Pro-Tem Carla Woolsey motioned and Alderman Mike Pack seconded. The motion carried. The public hearing to adopt this tax rate will be held on Sept. 17, 2024 at 4 p.m. at City Hall.
Also during this meeting, Arrington presented the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025 to the council, but no action was taken. The council agreed to take more time to look at the budget to make a decision and adopt it. The council met on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 4 p.m.
Next, a representative presented and discussed the audit that was performed on the City of Whitesboro for the fiscal year 2022-2023. The representative apologized for the delay on the audit. She informed the council they have made some adjustments with their staff and hope to be used by Whitesboro in the future. The audit was approved.
Council approved a solid waste rate adjustment for Frontier Waste Solutions, as well as the Chamber of Commerce’s annual budget.
Arrington informed the council about new operations regulations that have come out. She said each city that has their own electric department is supposed to have their own transmission operator. According to Arrington, a lot of the smaller cities such as Whitesboro cannot afford to hire a transmission operator on staff. She said Whitesboro has been grouped in the correct region and Granbury has decided to step up the transmission operations for all cities in the region. If there is an outage, Granbury would inform Whitesboro when to turn off feeders before turning back on in the City.
For $5,000 a year, Granbury can provide an additional service giving Whitesboro the ability to low shed electronically instead of manually (which can be done, if necessary, during an outage).
In other news, the City Council approved Whitesboro to enter into an interlocal Cooperation Agreement for fire and ambulance services. The three towns that have been approved for ambulance services are Collinsville, Sadler and Southmayd.
Whitesboro Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Patterson said after meeting with Sadler’s mayor it was determined the City of Sadler cannot afford the projected $20K to pay for the ambulance services for a full year. The City of Sadler does not charge for property taxes, therefore has a limited amount in their budget.
After much discussion, they have agreed to pay $10k a year to the City of Whitesboro for ambulance services. The City of Collinsville has agreed to pay $54,995.72 for ambulance services and the City of Southmayd has agreed to pay $28,431.63 for ambulance services.
In public safety, ‘National Night Out’ for Whitesboro is open for discussion. Whitesboro Police Chief Alex Coss is hoping to hold an event at a local park and have a police cruiser and fire truck available for kids to play inside and play with the sirens, as well as have bounce houses, a couple of food vendors, face painting and petting zoo for kids.
Collinsville has reached out with interest in partnering on a joint event.
Traditionally held on the first Tuesday in October, communities across the country hold their own National Night Out each year to increase awareness about police programs like drug prevention, town watch, neighborhood watch and other anti-crime efforts.
Since the Whitesboro event will likely take place, the council has decided to only hold one council meeting in the month of October. October’s meeting will be held on Oct. 15.
Moving forward, a series of public hearings took place regarding several local properties. The re-zone/re-plat of property generally located at 415 North Ave. (dividing one lot into three), 407 Depot St. (special use permit to allow mobiles to be moved onto a lot), and an area between Broadway St. and Depot St. (separating one lot into three) were all approved. The re-plat of 412 Third St. (turning one lot into two) was denied. A preliminary plat to include 125-128 lots on property south of Locust St. and west of US 377 was approved.
In ongoing city projects, the Water Tower Project will have a 12-inch water line connected down Hwy. 56 going to where the tank site is on Diamond Ranch Road, then cross Hwy. 82 and back to connect.
The engineer was present and updated the City Council on the status for each of the ongoing projects. He said plans for the million-gallon water tank for the elevated water tower are 80-90 percent completed. He said they are making progress with that project.
The elevated tank will take 18-24 months to construct. Once construction begins with the water lines, it will probably take six months. There are several specifics to take into consideration that the engineer discussed with the City Council. Lastly, 90 percent of the studies are done for the lift stations. A schedule for lift station improvements will be set up in the next couple of weeks.
On Texoma Drive, water lines are being installed. Project completion should take another six to eight weeks. No updates were given for the Fourth Street project.
Arrington said she has the Comprehensive Plan schedule prepared. She is in the process of emailing the committee with the schedule. The first meeting will be held on Sept. 19.