Brownfield City Council, Approval of Certificates of Obligation Bond for Brownfield Sports Complex

In a regularly scheduled City Council meeting today, they approved the certificates of obligation bonds for the construction cost of the Brownfield Sports Complex.

After the preliminary items of business, the Council began with items #5 which was for the City of Brownfield to call a city election for May 4th, 2019. This call approved unanimously.

Jake Lawrence with Government Capital Securities Service was on hand for the approval and explained how much the financial obligations are for the city. Lawrence showed the Council the total amount of the issuance which is $3,047,000.00 and will be paid back over a 15 year period with a 3.4% interest rate. Councilman Leon Pope asked, “Is there a penalty if this was paid off sooner?” Lawrence replied that this particular certificate of obligation does not have an early payoff penalty.

The investment bank who is loaning the certificates of obligation is Branch Banking and Trust Company (BB&T). Lawrence made mention that this interest rate is the lowest that he has seen and that most certificates of obligation are usually penalized if they are paid off early, however, BB&T does not do that. The council moved to accept and approve the certificates of obligation with a unanimous vote.

Moving on to the other items of business were the quarterly reports for the Fire Dept., Code Enforcement, Municipal Court, and the Police Dept.

Beginning with Fire Chief Dennis Rowe, he told the Council that from January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2018 that they ran a total of 199 calls, including fires, wrecks, and medical assist. The city had 115 calls and in the county, there were 84 calls. Chief Rowe also spoke about how the Fire Dept. recieved an $8000.00 grant from the Texas Forest Service which will be used for training materials.

Rowe went on to talk about the last major fire of 2018 which was the West Gin Fire. A total of nine different “mutual aid” fire departments came to fight the fire which was Meadow, Wellman, Idalou, New Deal, Seagraves, Tahoka, West Carlisle, Wolforth and Woodrow. Chief Rowe also mentioned that every city department in Brownfield helped out including TXDOT and DPS. It was estimated between 1.2 million to 1.4 million gallons of water were used to put out the fire.

Chief Rowe went on to talk about the new fire station. He began by saying, “That new fire station, I don’t know what to tell ya about that, it suppose to be in the final stages, I don’t know what is going to take to wrap this thing up, but apparently, there are issues over there.” Councilman Pope asked, “What are the issues?” Rowe’s reply was, “I’m really not for sure.” Councilman Pope asked, “Then who does know?” City Manager Eldon Job said, “we have a punch list that we are waiting for them to complete, and we are not seeing much progress. We are fixing to have a meeting with all parties concerned so they can see this punch list and they can get it completed.”

Councilman Pope said, “Well we drew a line in the sand in September, and they didn’t do anything about it. ” Chief Rowe said, “They havnt done anything about it, we’ve tried, believe me, to get them to show up and go to work.”

Mayor Geronimo Gonzales said to Chief Rowe, ” Going back to your quarterly reports, could you attach any logs for calls that you run to your next quarterly report?” Chief Rowe responded, “like the run sheet?” Mayor Gonzales said, “Yes.” The Council approved the Fire Department’s quarterly reports.

The Council then moved on to the code enforcement reports where Code Enforcement Officer Kitha Tankersly made mention that nuisances were down for the months of November and December.

The next quarterly reports were given by Municipal Judge Kenneth Cole. Judge Cole showed new cases filed for October 2018 were 84, November 2018 was 98, and December 2018 was 51. Warrants issued in Oct. 2018 were 12, Nov. 2018 was 61, and Dec. 2018 was 7. For the year 2018 there were only 57 speeding tickets issued compared to 143 in 2017 and 249 in 2016. According to Judge Cole’s reports, assaults are down as well with only 20 for 2018 compared to 32 in 2017 and 46 in 2016.

Police Chief Tony Serbantez gave his quarterly reports showing theft for Oct. 2018 at 23 and 26 thefts for both November and December of 2018. Domestic calls were 20 in October, 12 in November and 25 in December. Arrests and charges in October were 64, in November 65, and in December 67. Total warrants served from October 2018 to December 2018 was 98. The Council approved of all quarterly reports.

The Council ajourned the meeting. The next city council meerting will be on February 7th, 2019 at 7:30 AM. All Council members were present.