The Arlington City Council convened in special session on September 16, 2025, at 2:00 PM, beginning with an executive session to discuss real property and economic development. The open session commenced at 3:30 PM and adjourned at 4:20 PM. Mayor Pro Tempore Barbara Odom-Wesley presided in the absence of Mayor Jim Ross. Councilmember Raul Gonzalez participated virtually due to illness. Key topics included Tarrant Appraisal District board nominations, a technology priority update, commercial vehicle parking enforcement, towing authority under Senate Bill 857, committee reports on electricity procurement, farmers market expansion, HUD grant performance, and the Housing Finance Corporation budget.
Hey Raul, can you hear us? I'm Barbara Odom Wesley, Mayor Pro Tim. In the absence of the mayor, I'm calling to order the city council meeting on Tuesday, September 16th at 2 o'clock PM. City Council will now go into closed session at 2001 on September 16th, in accordance with the following sections of VTCA government code, chapter 551, section five five seven, point zero seven one, consultation with attorney, section five five one, point zero seven two, deliberation regarding real property, and section five five one eight seven. Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Barbara Odom Wesley. And in behalf of our mayor, Jim Ross, who's out of town, I am presiding over the afternoon City Council meetings. And the meeting is called to order at three thirty PM. Three point one. Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am here to talk about one of your favorite topics, the Terrant Appraisal District board appointments. We're going through this process just like we did last year at this time. The types of entities, you've got 21 ISDs, 42 cities, the county, the college, the water district, um the top five entities as far as size and number of votes are the city of Fort Worth, Fort Worth ISD, the county, AISD, the college, um, and we are the seventh largest. Kennedale ISD is the sixth largest. Um, and so historically, we've done five nominees at a time, and so there have been five thousand votes. Now, since there's only two up for nomination, there are going to be two thousand votes. Uh, we will have ninety-one of those votes, or a little bit above four point five percent. The TAD has added six conservation and reclamation districts, so which now gives them 17 votes out of the 2000, so it's less than one percent of the total votes. Um, the six are as you can see on the list with the um Terrent Regional Water District being the largest and Viridian being the second largest. Hoping I hit it. Um, the calendars you can see is uh the chief of praiser supposed to calculate the votes, he's already actually done that. They then expect nomination of candidates by all of the different boards and big councils, school district boards, whoever else wants to uh put forward nominations. So your next council meeting is October 14th. If you have interest in nominating anyone, that's when we will have uh that put in front of you on that council evening's agenda. Uh they will receive all of the uh will receive ballots back October 30th. That's when we'll know who all has been nominated, and then because we are not one of the uh top seven or top six um votes which have at least five percent. Our nominations actually are our votes aren't due until December 15th. So this nominating process, as I said, uh Ms. Burgess and Mr. Alford are in this schedule. The next time we you will have the chance to appoint anyone will be two years from now. And at that point, Mr. Blalock, Mr. Campos, and Ms. Pena will be up for nomination, and then it'll happen every two years thereafter, going from two to three back and forth. Um, as you look at it, depending upon the number of of candidates. If long as there are at least three candidates to guarantee an appointment, you would need at least 667 votes or about a third of the votes. No individual entity has the ability to appoint someone by themselves. If the ISDs all collaborated together, they could control one of the two. Um as stated before, only the top uh five. If you have more than five percent of the vote, they have to have voted by October uh November 30th, otherwise we get until December 15th. Um and I believe this is the information I've already told you about the other elected board members, three of them are elected by the public. The next time those three will come up will be next November in 2026, and thereafter they will be on four-year terms. The county assessor tax assessor collectors also on a four-year term, but his next cycle will be in 2028. So you can see how it is now staggered between the two nominated, three elected, three nominated, one elected, just back and forth. So every year there will be new blood on the board or the potential of new blood on the board. And with that, your next steps are October 15th to nominate any candidates that you have interest in, um, and then receiving the ballot by the end of October, and then we will make a decision and vote on that December 9th. We have until the 15th, but December 9th is a scheduled uh council date.