City ordinances see some updates before the year ends
Hallettsville city council members approved several updates to local ordinances last week, part of an ongoing review of city policies that’s been going on for a couple of years now
Some of the highlights include:
• The addition of a new section under city sign ordinances that establishes a policy for promoting local events with banners over the highway, that basically establishes six locations along U.S. 77 and U.S. 90 Alt, the costs for using such advertising, and the procedure for getting banners approved. This was discussed at length during the council’s October meeting, but no formal actions were taken at that time.
• Amending the fee schedule section under “Security Deposits” permitting small businesses to provide line of credit letters in lieu paying the deposit, something that’s been offered to large businesses and even a few residentials for some time.
• Approved a 5% increase to the base fees associated with city water, sewer and electrical services, respectively, as was discussed during the city’s budget workshops. City officials were careful to distinguish that these increases would appear as part of the base fees paid when securing a new service, not to the monthly rates paid for said services.
• And lastly, the city approved a state-mandated change to its policy regarding social media, as per Senate Bill 1893, signed into law last year. It basically bans the app Tik Tok from appearing on any government owned device, be it a cell phone, laptop or regular desktop computer.
The only exception permitted by the law comes via law enforcement, who as part of an investigation, may need to sign on to the site to gather evidence. Even then, the state is very clear that once the investigation is completed, all sign on data to the site needs to be removed from any government-owned devices and reinstalled only if such circumstances should occur once again.
It also specified that all government bodies must regularly monitor all their equipment to ensure that such sites do not find their way onto their systems.
In other business:
• The council passed a resolution approving the 2024 tax roll and levy.
• Council extended two city janitorial service contracts with Donald Drozd and Breana Kristek, as well as a Managed IT Services contract with James Teleco Inc., for the city’s computer servers.
•The city accepted two grant awards given by the Ladd and Katherine Hancher Library Foundation for microfilm digitization that the local library applied for, and another grant from the Kocurek Foundation to help cover costs tied to various library programs (that came to the library as a pleasant surprise).
• Council approved the city applying for some $750,000 leftover disaster assistance funding recently made available from the Texas Department of Agriculture and General Land Office, along with firm Grant Works to administer said grant, should those dollars be awarded, and TRC Companies to handle the engineering of said projects, again if said matching fund grants are awarded.
• The city approved its 2025 holiday schedule, matching the same holidays it had this year. Efforts were made to try and standardize the holiday schedule between the city and the county, but thus far, thus efforts have gone unreciprocated.
The next city council meeting, the final regular monthly meeting of 2024, will take place Monday, Dec. 16.