The Early City Council started off their regular meeting by approving an agreement for a funding request from the Early TMCN Leadership Program for their sundial. The grant is an amount not to exceed $25,000. The project is called Time to Shine and the heads of this project are the Early TMCN Leadership members Reese Estess and Aryn Lesley who are both seniors at Early ISD.
From selling sponsorships for columns on the sundial to businesses and corporations, Estess and Lesly have already raised $67,000. With this grant from the Early Municipal Development District, they will make their budget for the project. Additionally, Lesly and Estess are selling bricks as well which will be part of the sundial project. These bricks are personalized and cost $100. They have been going around to neighborhoods and businesses, trying to get the community involved in the project. They are selling the bricks through Friday, June 30th.
The City of Early is considering assigning a publishing newspaper for the City of Early to post legal notices and other postings. Legal notices, under state law, must be published in a print newspaper with regular circulation. The Brownwood Bulletin is only published once a week. So the City of Early is looking for a print paper in the nearby area that is published multiple times a week because state law requires legal notices to be published within certain time frames. As of this moment, the Council did not vote on a resolution.
The last item for matters of new business was looking at the survey given out to the public about a potential YMCA. Both before the mention of the YMCA, and after, the City of Early collected over 700 responses from Brown County. They found overwhelming support from the community. The survey revealed respondents were a good mix of different demographics, household sizes, age ranges, and a good split between those that have children at home and those who do not. 45% taking the assessment have never been a member of the YMCA, and 34% have been.
As for what people wanted in a YMCA, the top results were a fitness center, an indoor swimming pool, and physical therapy. Others were arts and crafts, health and nutrition, and after-school daycare.
The City of Early also has different plans for funding a potential YMCA. The City of Early might go on a capital campaign to go out for money, look for donors, and more. However, the survey for the YMCA asked respondents if the City of Early did a bond election, would respondents then support a YMCA? 75% said they would support it. 4% said they would not, mainly because they were against taxes, or others did not think they had the ability to vote in a bond election because they lived outside the county or city limits.
The City of Early has vetted 4 different architectural engineering firms that have worked on YMCAs before. The next step would be asking one of them to come up with a design for it.
In the Administrators Report, City Administrator Tony Aaron gave updates about the lake and the sidewalks that will be in the Town Center. Lastly, he notified that the reconstruction of the Autumn Drive street will be commencing.
Lastly, the Council did one of many budget workshops they will undergo during the summer. The Early City Council agreed they needed to increase the contribution towards their employees’ insurance and retirement benefits with rising inflation and to stay competitive.
The first thing they looked at was the insurance budget. The City of Early recommended to the Council, which they agreed with, to increase the City’s contribution to employee insurance by $1,025 a month per employee. The City of Early does however allow different insurance plans the employees can choose from.
On the retirement plan, the current plan for city employees is a maximum deposit of 5% of their paycheck into their retirement and the city matches that on a ratio is 1.5:1. The Early City Council chose that they will increase that ratio to a 2:1 matching, increasing the retirement fund.
The City of Early is also looking to fund a part-time position to assist with the Early Visitors Bureau due to the increase of events in the Early Visitors Center. Right now they only have 2-full time employees taking care of all the events around town. The Early Visitors Bureau also needs more funding for special projects and advertisements.
The Early City Council also looked at the budgets for water, sewer, and sanitation. They were looking at the budget for water without a rate increase. It is not sure if the water district will increase rates. Then the Council also viewed projected revenues for sewer, which were lower. Then the sanitation budget had fuel increases and the debt service for two trucks. Overall, the different budgets were healthy. There were budget requests to raise employees’ pay by 6% in the Public Works Department.
The next budget workshop is on July 18 at 12:00 pm. The regular council meeting will still be on July 11th.