Smithville City Council Meeting October 16
Notes from meeting taken by Connie Clark, Editor/Bastrop County Beacon
The recording of the meeting may be found on the City’s YouTube channel.
Multiple agenda items produced extensive discussion at this meeting. The first was the Action on a Certificate of Appropriateness for 108 NE 2nd Street (Smith General Store). The owner wants to create a drive-through window without tearing down any of the historic structure. Discussions included traffic issues with a drive-through on an alley backstreet with Council Members and Citizens commenting on that and a variety of other issues. When it was finally understood that the Certificate only had to do with the historic structure of the building that it was approved by Council. This was just the first step to actually getting permits for the changes.
Another time-consuming discussion was about the allocation of the $3M Tax Note funds. Even though the budget and suggestions for improvements were reviewed by Council in the Budget Process, several disagreements with the amounts planned to spend were heard. Each area’s list of improvements were explained in detail and were approved individually with changes. For the Police Department wish list of $501K, all items were approved. For the $1.1M in the Public Works/Utilities wish list all were approved. In the General category only four items were approved with the ones in red to be discussed in a Council meeting in November. You can find the list on page 80 of the document referenced here: https://easyedit.ci.smithville.tx.us/filemanager/files/Council_Packet_10_16_23_Final.pdf
There were presentations and Citizen comments on the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Smithville Workforce Training Center for the use of the City’s facilities. After an Executive Session, Council approved the MOU.
There was no action on the Recycling Center agenda item.
Council formally opposed the creation of a rock crushing plant off of 153 and 71 with approximately 70 trucks entering the facility on a daily basis. A memo of intent will be created and signed by all Council Members. However, there will be a meeting on November 6 or 7 to discuss the issues with TxDOT.
Agenda items 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 were approved by Council with relatively little discussion.
Another Executive Session was held with the outcome being an approval of the City Manager’s annual assessment and an 8% increase in pay. In November, the 2024 goals will be established.
The five-hour plus meeting was then adjourned.
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