The Whitesboro City Council keyed in on administrative approvals, infrastructure projects and interlocal agreements at last week’s regular meeting Tuesday, Dec. 10 at City Hall.
In a meeting that lasted right at an hour with no executive session, the council approved an appointment to the Economic Development (EDC) Board of Directors, edited the city procurement policy and moved forward with the first steps in adopting impact fees for new developments.
The council agreed unanimously to appoint Shawn Ablett to the EDC Board. Ablett lives in Whitesboro and is a Senior Specialty Sales Leader for Abbvie— a pharmaceutical sales company.
He has been in the industry since 2010 and holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Memphis.
The council also agreed unanimously to appoint alderman John Moore as an ex-officio (non-voting) member of the EDC board as well.
After a presentation from Birkhoff, Hendricks and Carter, LLP, the council agreed to begin first steps in assessing roadway and stormwater impact fees.
“The impact fee basically would be assessed to the new developments coming into town… that new development impacts your roads, existing or what you need to build. So that would go to offset some of the impact that the new development has on the system,” engineer Craig Birkhoff told the council.
The first step in adopting impact fees is to hold public hearings on the matter.
The council agreed to hold those public hearings at their Jan. 14 regular meeting.
Before adjourning, the council adopted a change to the city purchase policy that lowers the threshold of purchases the city administrator can approve without council consent from $10,000 to $6,000.
The amendment also lowers the amount of which purchases require a purchase order from $500 to $100.
“I think that’s a good practice for me. I’m new to this in terms of this role and want to see more than what I’m seeing,” interim city administrator Phil Harris told the council. “I want to see (this change) so I understand how department heads are spending the money. Not that they’re hiding anything. It’s just about me being more comfortable with what I should be seeing on a regular basis as well as what I would consider unusual…we are going to update the procurement policy to the right size to our organization. The policy that we have right now is too heavy. We don’t have those people to those horses to run that machine.”
In other business, the council:
-Agreed to collect bids for a full roof replacement at the Jimmie O. Rector Building.
-Renewed the city’s annual library services agreement with Grayson County.
-Entered an interlocal agreement with the cities of Bartlett, Bridgeport, Goldsmith, Granbury, Robstown, Seymour and Sanger concerning electricity transmission and operator matters.