Brownfield City Council met on Thursday morning, April 4, 2024, and heard from the outside auditor on the city’s finances, plus an agenda item that some did not expect was discussed. The Council began to work the agenda after the invocation, pledges, and public comments, which there were none.
Beginning with the outside auditor, the City of Brownfield’s Charter requires an outside audit of the City of Brownfield’s financial records. Bolinger, Segars, Gilbert & Moss LLP (BSGM). was the firm that did the audit, and representative Tyler Canady presented the financial audit for the fiscal year ending 9-30-23. Canady went on to explain there is an internal control letter given to the Council to summarize the audit. According to the letter, BSGM did not identify any deficiencies.
Canady continued and showed the Council the opinion letter which gave the necessary information of how the city finances are doing. After reading a portion of the opinion, Canady said, “So that’s a clean opinion… certainly the grant folks, bond folks… if you’re dealing with them, that’s the wording they are looking for.” Canady also told the Council that the pension fund for the City of Brownfield employees is overfunded by 14%, which means if the city was to shutdown today, then the employees who are fully vested will received their full pension no matter what.
Next, the Council heard from City Manager Jeff Davis and Electric Superintendent Cat Gonzalez about the Electric Dept., also known as Brownfield Power & Light. Recently BP&L received an award for 35 years of no hours lost due to injuries on the job. According to Gonzalez, that is 728,000 man-hours, not lost due to injuries on the job. (Related TownTalk Show). Also, Lineman Alex Llamas was awarded the Life Saving Award for his bravery. (Check out the video here).
The Council moved on to hear the quarterly reports for the Street and Sanitation Dept. Javier Duran gave the reports to the Council, telling them, his dept. continues to work on maintaining the streets by patching potholes. Also, the Street Dept, has been spraying the weeds along the curbs as the weather has permitted. They are continuing to work on the caliche roads and due to the recent rain, the Street Dept. has had to go back over some of these roads multiple times. Duran said, “We will continue to maintain these roads as needed.” Due to supply chain issues with gravel and asphalt, it has taken longer to fix the roads in Brownfield that are caliche. Duran also talked about how they’ve begun to mow some of the right of ways as the weeds and grass have been growing due to the warmer weather and recent rainfall, and they will begin mowing the vacant lots around town to try and stay on top of the growing season.
Duran moved on to the Sanitation reports. The Sanitation Dept. continues with the alley clean up running the sections as needed as well as taking care of work orders. Duran said, “Recently, there has been an increase in the amount of debris in the alleys and we are also continually working on keeping the alleys maintained.” According to Duran, the landfill continues business as usual. The construction of the lined pit was completed in mid-December and they completed the excavation of the construction and demolition pit towards the end of January with everything finalized on the first
week of February. Duran was asked about how many trash trucks are running, and he said, “We have two running right now. We do have a new one ordered, however the chassis has not been delevered to the company that builds the trucks.” He went on to say, once the the chassis is delivered, the turnaround for gettin the truck built is about 90 days.
Up next for the Council was to consider awarding bids on the wastewater treatment plant for aeration improvement. Bids for the 2024 Wastewater Treatment Plant Aeration Improvements were opened and read aloud on March 27, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. Some people have noticed the smell that is coming from the wastewater treatment plant (sewer), and it’s because the aerators at the sewer are clogged and need to be replaced. The proposed budget for aerators was $315,000 and the bid came in at $156,000. Davis said, “I know the smell out there is not good, this will hopefully resolve that pretty quick. When they put this in, it may get a little worse before it gets better because we are putting oxygen down in the water… kinda stirring it up.” The Council approved the bid.
The next item of business was to have a discussion regarding park amenities and future uses for the existing park spaces, and this was not an action item. Mayor Tom Hesse requested this item to be placed on the agenda. Mayor Hesse said, “I asked this to be put on the agenda. I have one issue with our skate park… it’s not being utilized and myself, I think we should sell it, get rid of it or we can move it down some place else. I’d rather see us take that space and actually put in some pickleball courts.” According to the new AI software the city obtained, it shows only 1.6 visitors a day at the skate park which is located next to the Brownfield Family Aquatic Center on the Old Lamesa Road.
After this was mentioned, the Council began to discuss it.
Mayor Hesse said, “I know a couple of cities that have requested by parks and recreation to buy a skate park… we could probably sell it to them.
Councilman Mark Williams asked, “The implements… I don’t know what they are called… the features, so they portable and can be removed?”
Hesse replied, “Yeah they’re just bolted… and so just basically take them out. Some people have said, well maybe we can put them back down in the park, but they’re not gonna be used down there either.”
Councilman Leon Pope said, “No… you’re moving one problem from one place to another and you have the same problem.”
Councilman Jimmy Garza asked, “Do we have enough space for pickleball?”
Hesse answered, “Yeah you can get three of ’em in there (3 courts)”
Councilwoman Kelli Mendez asked, “Have we even asked the community how they feel about that?”
Hesse said, “I’m just throwing this out right now.” Willams chimed in saying, “If we don’t have people using the skate park, we don’t…” Hess then said, “I mean It’s just a waste of time. The biggest time we’ve had was 67 people out there watching the fireworks show.”
Mendez then asked, “How are we finding out exactly how many people are using it?”
Hesse said, “The AI… the thing we just bought into. So we went back a full year and it came out or averaged out 1.68 visits a day.”
Mendez then said, “I see a whole lot more people there than that.”
Hesse replied to Mendez, “I’ve never seen anybody out there… I guess you go out there different times.”
Mendez said, “I think we do.”
Garza asked, “nobody puts on a tournament or anything like that for stuff like that… cause it would be a one time deal when you get a lot of people versus…”
Pope went on to say, “I’d like to ask a skateboarder though, where are you gonna go if we get rid of this… is there an alternative place? Because there was bound to be a place before we put this in…”
The Council then discussed what the cost would be, and Davis said it would be under $1000 for each court.
Williams asked the Chief of Police about if there was no place for skateboarders to skate, what would it look like, and the Chief said, “I don’t really see that many kids skateboarding… I don’t really know the answer to that. If it becomes an issue, we will deal with it if it is an issue.”
Williams then said, “That was the answer I was looking for.”
Pope said, “This will be utilized.” (talking about the pickleball courts)
Mendez went on to say, “I just hate to see us take away something that some of the kids do. We don’t have a whole lot that offers our kids around town and there are kids who get their skateboards out and go down there
Pope said, “But the utilization is so low… “
Mendez said, “I understand that, but maybe we can find another area.”
Garza said, “Yes, can we find another area Jeff?”
Davis said, “Yeah… I mean if y’all want to look at doing this as a capital item project, we’ll have to put it into next years budget… basically pour a pad.
Since this was only a discussion item, the Council did not take any action on it.
The final two items of business were to grant special events permits. The Council meeting was adjourned. Councilman Marshall Martell was the only member absent. The next meeting is slated for Thursday, April 18, 2024, at 7:30 a.m. in the council chambers at City Hall.
