The Brownfield City Council met on Thursday morning December 1, 2022, to discuss and take action on a few items of business. In the previous meeting, the Council voted to install David Cox as the new City of Brownfield Municipal Judge. In Thursday’s meeting, Cox would take the oath of office for the position. According to the Texas Government Code, a municipal judge must follow certain state guidelines and Section 30.00006 of the Texas Government Code provides that the term of office for municipal judges “must be for a definite term of two or four years.” Judge Cox was sworn in and is now the official Brownfield Municipal Judge.
The duties of the City of Brownfield Municipal Judge include but are not limited to:
- Preside over Municipal Court for all criminal class C Misdemeanors, criminal jury and nonjury trials, pre-trial conferences, juvenile warnings and other cases appropriately tried in Municipal Court.
- Maintain a central docket of all cases filed in the City of Brownfield.
- Review and/or deny requests for continuances.
- Determine innocence or culpability (when hearing cases without a jury) and levies fine commensurate with the violation in such manner to preserve equity and uniformity in the application of existing laws and ordinances.
- Supervise the administration of juror notification and direct jurors in trial cases on their role in the interpretation and application of law.
- Be available, or have adequate judge expertise available, on a 24/7 basis, to review and/or sign complaints, summons, subpoenas, affidavits for search and arrest warrants, appeal bonds, etc.
- Support court activities with Municipal Court Clerk and City Prosecutor and other city departments.
- Review legislation and current case law affecting offenses and the criminal justice system and implement procedures to ensure compliance. Perform legal research as needed and determine fine amounts.
- Conduct hearings (including property, emergency protective order, code enforcement, dangerous dog, etc.).
- Daily jail magistrations – rights warnings, set bonds
- Juvenile hearings.
- Indigent hearings.
- Approve/Deny Personal Recognizance (PR) Bond requests.
- Issue warrants (search, arrest, mental health), summons, magistrate warnings, etc.
- Primarily responsible for the review and signing of all paperwork prepared by court clerks.
Next on the agenda was for the Council to hold a public hearing on a request to change Block 1, Lots 7 & 8 of the Longbrake Addition (215 East Ripley) from an R-2 (Two-family residential) District to a C-2 District to allow a business. On November 13, 2022, the Planning and Zoning Commission (PZC) held a public hearing concerning changing the subject property located at 215 E Ripley from R-2 zone to C-2 zone. In addition to the PZC’s public hearing, the City Council must also hold a public hearing after the PZC held its meeting.
After the public hearing took place, the next item of business was for the Council to accept the recommendation from they PZC to change the zoning. There was not much discussion on the item, other than showing the Council where the property is located that will be changed. The Council unanimously approved the item.
The Council would move to hear the quarterly reports from the Brownfield Fire & Rescue and Municipal Court. Chief Dennis Rowe began with the BFR reports, which was his last reports to give since he will be retiring on December 31, 2022. Call for service from January 1, 2022, to September 30, 2022, there were a total of 121 calls. In the City, there has been a total of 58 calls and in the County, 63 calls. According to Chief Rowe, the equipment report was Unit #54 is out of service, and due to bad valves and electrical issues, it will be out of service for an estimated time of four to eight weeks. Unit #56 is waiting to have pump valves replaced and downtime should be about one week. Units #R1 will have the drive line repaired and #52 will have emergency lights replaced soon the downtimes on those are about one week.
Other reports given by Chief Rowe was the fire prevention with the back-to-school bash. There are no new plans for construction. Also, there have been 18 Critical Incidents. Staffing. The BFRD is now one firefighter short and currently has 14 volunteers.
In the Municipal Court reports from July 2022 to September 2022 there were 250 new cases filed with 242 of the disposed. there were 111 warrants issued, 44 cases reactivated, and 49 magistrate warnings. There was a total of $47,261 in case revenue with $26,766 going to the city and $20,492 going to the state.
The next item was a clean-up item where the Council voted to approve Resolution NO. 20221201, adopting an investment policy and designating approved training for investing officers and related matters as required by the Public Funds Investment Act. The Texas Government Code chapter 2256 (Public Funds Investment Act) requires the City Council to annually review the Investment Policy regarding any Public Funds and funds under it’s control and adopt a resolution stating it has reviewed the policy and investment strategies and recorded any changes. The Council approved the measure unanimously.
Prior to Judge Cox taking the oath, there were two people who made public comments. Nathan Tells and JR Ferguson both spoke about Item 11 on the agenda, which was the final agenda. Tells spoke about “net metering” and the affects the City of Brownfield has on it and Ferguson spoke on the business side of solar energy, basically needing the city to finalize how it will go about allowing and charging solar customers.
The final agenda item was to discuss and consider amending the Brownfield City Code of Ordinances Chapter 13 entitled “Utilities” by amending article 13.1100 entitled “Distributed Generation” establishing the requirements for interconnection and parallel interconnection and/or parallel operation of distributed generation. Over the past few weeks city staff, specifically, Brownfield Power & Light Director Cat Gonzales visited with other municipal electric utility companies, electric cooperatives, and investor-owned utilities about their respective distributed generation programs and metering standards that deal with solar energy.
Gonzales shared 13 different municipal electric utility companies, electric cooperatives, and investor-owned utilities that deal with solar energy on homes and businesses. According to Gonzales, 11 of the 13 entities he reached out to are comparable to Brownfield’s metering. Gonzales reached out to the following, Lighthouse Electric Cooperative, Big Country Electric Cooperative, Oncor, Reliant Energy, Lubbock Power & Light, Excel Energy, City of Granbury, City of Weatherford, South Plains Electric Cooperative, Lyntegar Electric Cooperative, City of Bridgeport, City of Fredericksburg, and the City of San Marcos.
After Gonzales spoke, City Manager Jeff Davis told the Council, “I’m not expecting any action today, that’s not what we’re here for and just wanted to let y’all know that were are still working on this project.” After more discussion, Councilman Eric Horton asked the Council, “Is there a way we can have a workshop? I need some way to process this… we can actually sit down and discuss it in layman’s terms… have Cat there and other people there that can discuss it to where we can learn because we’re about to change the ordinance. I think we need to have the correct due process for the people of the community.”
Councilwoman Michelle Cooper said, “I was going to suggest to, that way people like JR (Ferguson) and Mr. Tells can come in and have that discussion and everybody can talk on the same page.”
Mayor Tom Hesse chimed in saying, “We can have a work session sometime.”
Davis then said, “Y’all are going to have to give me a date… that’s what I told the Mayor when I asked about this today… if we wanted. to have a work session. Do y’all want to do it now or after the first of the year, what were yall thinking… I mean you got to realize we got to git experts in here as well.”
Mayor Hesse said, “Lets shoot for next year in January.”
Davis said, “I’m just trying to get some answers for Mr. Tells… he’s contacted me quite a bit and he needs to know we are still working on it.”
Councilwoman Cooper then told Gonzales, “Well you’ve done a great deal of research that I appreciate but they (Nathan Tells & JR Ferguson) also expressed there’s not been any communication about that research, so this would be a great opportunity for everyone to have the same information.”
The Council moved to have a workshop over this topic in January 2023.
The Council meeting was then adjourned. Michael Tackitt was the lone Council person not at the meeting. The meeting is slated for December 15, 2022, at 7:30 am in the Council Chambers at City Hall.
