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On July 7th, 2009 the Johnson City City Council met for their regularly scheduled meeting. Their agenda was full and they were eager to get down to business quickly.

Directly after the meeting began, Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) employee, James Crawford, provided the council a brief update as to the status of the local electric company’s recent actions. According to Crawford, there is a new rate increase that is going to go into affect as of August 1st. Details regarding this rate increase are available on the PEC website (www.pec.coop).

Following Mr. Crawfords presentation, Victor Telez, made a presentation to the council on the behalf of the Masonic Lodge. “It is my pleasure to present the Johnson City Masonic Lodge #561 with the Builders Award… this year we have chosen to recognize Rhonda Stell for her contributions to the city of Johnson City, Texas with the Builders Award,” Telez stated. The council members all congratulated Rhonda for her accomplishment.

The council then opened a public hearing for Kent and Linda Steele. The agenda item stated that the purpose was for “Kent and Linda Steele annexation at 604 S. Avenue F and S, Avenue F roadway from the South side of the Post Oak intersection South to the Northwest corner of the Benson Ranch.”

According to Johnson City City Manager, David Dockery, “Kent and Linda Steele are building a home on the South side of Avenue F…and they’ve requested annexation – but we must annex the roadway of Avenue F in order to make them continuous within the city limits… all water, sewer, and street access are available.” Mayor Kermit Roeder, asked for comments from the public regarding the matter, but nobody responded.

Once the public hearing was closed, the council members discussed the issue amongst themselves before they finally agreed to the deal with certain requirements as recommended from Johnson City City Attorney, Pat McGowan.

Perhaps the one agenda item that was the central focal point of the meeting dealt with local resident Charles Matus. Matus owns a vacant home at 204 N. Avenue Q. Since the home is currently vacant, it hardly uses any water – however a recent gauge reading claimed that 31,000 gallons of water had been used at the home. Matus did some extensive research on his own, and even partnered with Dockery in the investigation as to where the water had gone. They looked at all of the available options, such as a leaky pipe, and even discussed the possibility that somebody used the faucet outside of the home. However, after much discussion the council agreed to charge Matus his normal bill as opposed to the $183 water bill he had received.

“This house has been on the meter for probably two to three years…and it hardly ever uses water…suddenly the meter reads 31,000 gallons of water… and frankly I don’t feel like I owe for the water… if you can show me anywhere where a drop went – I’ll buy the water, because I’ll know it’s mine… but we have looked and put it under a pressure gauge and there’s no signs of water…”

In the city’s ongoing quest to mark things off of their list from the Comprehensive Plan that residents recently took place in, the city is looking at the possibility of creating their own website. Bids are being accepted for the creation of a city website, and the council has already heard one proposal from a company named Revise based out of North Carolina. This company specializes in “canned” websites that are easy to use and manipulate by various individuals that work for the city.

The most recent council meeting discussed a proposal by local Johnson City resident, George Cofran, for the opportunity to be the city’s webmaster. However, council member Rhonda Stell preferred the larger company.

“I know George does very good work,” Stell stated. “But this is going to be a very big project, and the people at city hall need to be involved in updating our website… I just think that if there is only one person who can create, fix, or change things then that could be a problem in the future.”

The general feeling from the rest of the council was that if there were only one individual involved in the city’s website, then that would force the city to rely very heavily upon just one person. The other offer allows the city to be in charge of it’s website content, and updates, and easily allows multiple individuals to be able to change details on the site as needed.

The decision for this agenda item was to take no action on it until the city’s budget was completed in the near future in order to determine how much funding would be available for such a project.

Gandolf Burrus made a presentation to the council regarding the status of some grant money, and David Dockery discussed the status of some city projects that are currently underway. The Planning and Zoning committee met this past Monday. They have new members on their team, and one of the first items the team wants to address is the local Sign Ordinance. However, before they dive into changing the wording on the current ordinance, the new members want to drive around town and look at the current signs that are in place before they start tinkering with the ordinances.

The council members discussed putting up an old gasoline grader for sale. They agreed to set the starting minimum bid price at $2500.

Item 20 on the agenda discussed the possibility of setting up usage fees for the Community Park and baseball field.

Dockery stated that “most of the surrounding communities charge around $15 to $25 for field use with a 2 to 4 hour limit per use… our light bill for one month came to about $173.” He added, “we know that everybody is using the lights… in fact a softball team from Blanco comes out here to practice… and we’ve had some late night soccer games going on from midnight until around 2 am.”

Mr. Dockery’s solution is to set up a box that locks and then charge individuals a certain amount to obtain the key to turn on the lights. His other suggestion to the council was a money operated timer, though he is concerned that such a timer would be subject to potential vandalism. In the end, the council voted to pursue the possibility of setting up a coin operated timer on the city community park and field lights. They felt that this would be the most fair way for people to access the facilities.

One of the last agenda items dealt with the city’s drought conditions. Currently Johnson City is entering into Stage One of the drought contingency plan. According to Dockery, “Stage 1 has no requirements, this is only for public information – to request from our residents that they reduce their water usage by ten percent.” Dockery took this years stage 1 drought recommendation to another level, by informing the council “since we are in such a drought prone area, I believe we should simply have June 1st of every year be our Stage 1 trigger, where we always ask our residents to be aware of their water usage and try to limit it by ten percent.” The city council unanimously agreed.

Following Dockery’s presentation regarding the Stage 1 drought conditions, the council members paid the bills, and took care of other house keeping items before they dismissed for the evening.