The Killeen City Council convened on December 10, 2024, at 3:00 PM for a combined workshop and regular meeting. Notable achievements included a 99.11% customer satisfaction rating for the Texas State Veterans Cemetery and allocation of over $258,000 in child safety and hotel-motel tax funds. The council received the quarterly financial report, approved consent agenda items, held two public hearings on rezoning, and conducted the city manager’s annual evaluation, resulting in a 4% COLA pay increase.
All items approved without objection (motion by Councilmember Solomon, second by Councilmember Alvarez; vote 5-0):
Thank you all for coming out this afternoon to our workshopslash council meeting. I will call the meeting to order. Let the record shows that Mayor Pro Tim, Councilmember Cigarro, and Councilmember Avarez is not present. Councilmember Solomon, would you be so kind to do the pledge of allegiance for Councilman Sigar? Yes. All right. Would you all please stand? Most gracious father, we thank you once again for your many blessings that you have bestowed upon the city of Kaleen. We thank you for our staff. We thank you for our residents. We thank you for our counsel. God bless our men and women that protect and serve this great nation and their family members and those individuals in our community that will be along or will lack in the counter resources to enjoy the holidays. Let us have an open heart, open mind, show kindness, show love to one another, continue to watch over us, guide us, protect us, our first responders and all of our staff and employees in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Councilmember Solomon. Can I please get a motion to approve the agenda? Madam Mayor make a motion that we approve the agenda. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor, yes, all opposed, no. This is not working. Motion carries four to zero. PR 24031. Presentation of Bell County Child Safety Check. Thank you. Is it represented Mr. Shea? Hey, sir, how are you? Pretty good. How are you, Mayor? I'm doing fine, are you? Pretty good. Well, Mayor, Council, thank you for having me this afternoon. I am Shay Ludicky. I'm your tax assessor collector for Bell County, and I'm here to give you not only one check, but two checks. Um the commissioners and the county judge could not be here with me today to present the hotel motel tax uh check to you guys, so they allowed me to do that. They are in closed session at the courthouse in Belton. So I'll start with the child safety check first. So our registration fees were down just a little bit last year, but we did still collect 462,124.50 cents for child safety fees to be spread out across all municipalities in Bell County. Uh since the program started in 2001, uh the Bell County has collected and distributed nine million one hundred eighty-four thousand seven hundred and forty-one dollars and ninety-eight cents in these dollar fifty fees. That's a lot of dollar fifty fees that we've collected and distributed. Um in total to the city of Kaleen, we allocated and distributed three million two hundred and seventy-three thousand nine hundred and sixty-three dollars and seventy-three cents just to Kaleen. Now I'm going to read a little paragraph from my little letter here telling you how the fees are supposed to be used in the state of Texas. As outlined in the Transportation Code, Chapter 502.403, the county tax assessory collector has the authority with the approval from the commissioner's court to levy an additional dollar fifty per vehicle registration, excluding those exempted by code. These funds are earmarked for existing crossing guard programs. In cases where a school district lacks a crossing guard program, the money may be allocated to initiatives promoting child safety, health, or nutrition. This includes support for child abuse prevention intervention as well as drug and alcohol abuse prevention. Alternatively, the funds can be directed towards programs enhancing public safety and security, as per Article 102.014G of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The check for this year's allocation for Colleen is 171,771 dollars and sixty-eight cents.