Mayor Bill Weber opened the meeting at 5:30, with Mayor pro tem Gil Lillard doing the invocation.
The first agenda item was to hear from visitors. Former Councilman Robert Humphrey came to speak about the parking ordinance. The City is requiring him to move his boat, which has been parked beside his house and behind the front edge of the house. He passed around photos of the arrangement, which showed a very well-kept yard and driveway. Mr. Humphrey was very eloquent in his appeal that boats be exempted from the parking ordinance. In the discussion that followed, City Manager Yost Zakhary said that about 90 violations (applying to boats, RVs and campers) had been identified in Woodway, and all but about 4 of those had been rectified.
Items 2-5 dealt with approving the annual budget, tax rate, employee compensation, and the master fee schedule. The short version is that the tax rate in Woodway is staying the same (actually going down very slightly) as it has for the past 10 years or so. Even so, with rising property values (more accurately, with rising assessments), the total revenue the City expects to bring in should be up by about 6.5% over the past fiscal year. Also, some slight increases in the fees charged for various things are happening. This includes slight changes in the water rates, but only by about $ 0.10 per one thousand gallons, which is roughly a 2-3% increase.
We then skipped to item 7, the proposed purchase of electronic voting machines. A recent change in federal and state law, and in the county's willingness to supply voting machines at low cost, had threatened to force major changes in the timing of Woodway elections. The best solution appears to be the purchase of our own voting machines, with the cost being shared by at least the Midway Independent School District and possibly by the City of Hewitt. The costs are not excessive (about $4600 now and some money each year for programming) and will keep our elections the same as they have been. The City Secretary Jennifer Canady did a lot of work to explore the various possibilities. She is extremely professional in all her work, especially when it comes to elections.
Item 6 was going through the recommendations for changes to the City charter recommended by the Charter Review Committee. This committee was headed by Linc Harris and put in a huge amount of time updating the charter and fixing possible problems. The Council went through the recommendations for something like an hour or more, aided by City Attorney Mike Dixon. The major change is that Council terms would be transitioned to 3 years. I believe the idea behind this is mostly to make it so that a turnover of a majority of the Council would require at least two consecutive elections. This would prevent what happened in the 2009 elections, where 4 incumbents were replaced, fueled by an anti-incumbent mood and allegations that proved to be unsubstantiated. The 4 who were voted off the Council that year were all good people. The proposed change would have no more than 3 up for re-election in any given year. In addition, a limit of three consecutive terms has been proposed in order to give more citizens a chance to participate in City governance. The charter changes will be voted on by the citizens of Woodway in the May 2012 election.
The meeting adjourned at 7:44 pm.
