This is a live blog from the College Station City Council’s special workshop meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 18. It’s not the official minutes.
The workshop will be broadcast on a tape-delayed basis on Suddenlink Channel 19 on Wednesday at noon. The meeting also can be watched online. An archive of previous council meetings also is available on the website.
2:14 p.m.
The workshop meeting has started. Councilmember Jess Fields is absent.
2:40 p.m.
State Legislative Plan
By a 6-0 vote, the council adopted the city’s State Legislative Plan for the 83rd Legislature, which convenes in January. The legislative plan will be used to represent the city’s positions to legislators throughout the session.
Here’s the PowerPoint presentation received by the council:
3:08 p.m.
Utility Dispatch Reporting System
By a 6-0 vote, the council approved a proposal to update College Station Utilities’ Interactive Voice Response and to upgrade its Outage Management System. CSU began using an automated troubleshooting and outage reporting system in 2001 to handle the large number of calls that come into dispatch in an outage. The system is no longer upgradeable and has problems working with the city’s telephone system. The goal of the upgrade is to improve customer service, troubleshooting, outage information and outage data.
Here’s the PowerPoint presentation received by the council (the council approved option No. 3):
3:33 p.m.
Pay Day Lending Activities
The council heard a presentation about a resolution supporting the regulation of payday and auto title lending businesses.The United Way’s Financial Stability Committee has asked the cities of College Station and Bryan to approve resolutions urging the Texas Municipal League to introduce the legislation and for the governor and state legislature to enact it. The council will consider the resolution at its Jan. 10 meeting.
Here is the PowerPoint presentation received by the council:
3:36 p.m.
BioCorridor Joint Development Agreement Amendment
By a 6-0 vote, the council approved an amendment to the Interlocal Cooperation and Joint Development Agreement for the Joint Research Valley BioCorridor Development Project. The amendment changes the definition of target company to remove the requirement of a prospect’s minimum taxable value as $15 million. Revenue sharing will be triggered by development within the BioCorridor.
3:45 p.m.
Creation of Standing Committees
By a 6-0 vote, the council adopted resolutions creating a city council Economic Development Committee, Budget and Finance Committee, Compensation and Benefits Committee and a Transportation and Mobility Committee.
3:54 p.m.
Council Board Appointments
The council appointed Councilmembers John Nichols and Blanche Brick to the Brazos County Health Department Board, and Councilmember Karl Mooney to the Intergovernmental Council.
3:55 p.m.
The special meeting has been adjourned.
