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These are old entries from the
main blog page
03-22-2010: DCTA to Provide A-Train,
Capital Projects Updates at Public Meeting. Monday, 10-22-2010, 6:30
p.m. Lewisville Community Rm 1197 W Main St
03-15-2010:
City Council Meeting 03-15-2010:
PRE-MEETING COMMENTS: I have been getting many calls about the article in the Dallas Morning News (DMN). I thank all of you for the calls of support. For now, you can get the some information from the article
in the Newspaper at DMN. The amount that I will be
paying for 2010 should be less than $20/year not $47 as the
Blogger mentioned. The follow up to this article
is here.
POST-MEETING COMMENTS:
Steve Stoler of Channel 8 (WFAA-TV) was there and did a report
on this situation. I do not like what the title
implies that I "Failed to Pay Business Taxes". How can one fail if
never given a chance? I think Mr. Stoler fairly covered
both sides of the issue. I just do not agree with the
other side.
Short Version: I am not in arrears in paying my taxes. I
did not know about this. I took immediate action to fix it when
I found out about it. I have not received a bill yet nor is it
passed due. I did not intentionally evade paying my
personal property taxes.
Long Version: Monday afternoon (03-08-2010), I was told I
was not paying my taxes for my office in my home by a local
blogger. I was angry about this because I was being accused of
intentionally doing something illegal. I called the County to verify
about paying taxes on the personal property in my home. I was told to fill out a several page form.
On Tuesday, I asked a few questions about the form and sent it
in. The estimated annual taxes for 2010 will be about $20/year
or less.
On Wednesday: I got a call from the City Attorney on
this matter. He was advising that an issue came up about
this from a local blogger about how it conflicts with our City Charter.
The Blogger wants me dismissed from the Council. The Attorney
advised that I could not be dismissed
legally on this - even if I had been in arrears - which I was
not. I also
saw an email which had my political opponent's email attached to it asking
about the removal of a candidate from office in reference to
arrears and I knew at this point things would elevate. Later the person from the
County that helped
me with the form called and said that they will go back two
years for which I will get a bill in about six weeks and I will
pay it. Then my regular 2010 taxes will be billed in October.
I did ask if I could pay it now because I did not want to be in
arrears. I was told at this time I am not in arrears (not past
due) because I do not have a bill yet. If I had a past due
bill, then it would be in arrears. Could I leave a check?
They said that they would just mail it back because there was no
account yet.
Then on Thursday I find out that it will be on the
Agenda. The City attorney asked that we not talk about
this in groups or blog about it until after the meeting – That
is, since it is on the agenda and is subject to the Open
Meetings Act, the other Council Members might see it and that
could be a violation.
As for my business, I am an IT consultant – a
subcontractor who works by the hour. I have virtually no assets.
I go to businesses and homes and I fix PCs. I do not see clients
in my home. My business started part-time and has grown to
support me and my family. I know that I am not a CPA and that is why I hired
CPAs years ago. They helped me obtain DBA papers with the
County and help me comply with the law. I have had several CPAs do my taxes over the years and none
of them have ever mentioned that I had to pay personal property
taxes on my home office (desk, PC, printer, etc…).
The County never sent me a notice of this either. I learned a
few years ago that retail and commercial locations (store fronts,
warehouses, office buildings, etc...) had to pay personal
property taxes. I never thought that this would ever apply to a
person's residence.
I would venture a guess that most people who have a
small home business do not know this either, so let me tell you
what I learned this week. A person will have to pay personal
property taxes on their home office or any personal property if
they use that personal property to make money. Period. These
items can include but not limited to: Office furniture (desk,
table, lamp, etc…), office equipment (phone, fax, printer, PC,
calculator, etc...), tools of your trade (blow torches, hammers,
ladders, etc...), and inventory. Here are just a few areas that you
might not have thought about … Mary Kay, Avon, Handy Man stuff,
Mow Lawns, Massage Therapy, a subcontractor, bringing work home
from your business or work. Yes, work. Technically speaking you
would be doing something to make a profit. Knowing
all this, I wonder if my accusers (or their spouses) are
violating this law. Apparently they are aware of this law.
I wish that things were handled differently. It
was not until I heard it was going to be on the Agenda that I realized
what this could mean. All from something that I was previously unaware and
that I had already taken action and fixed. I do not fault my
fellow councilmen for wanting to discuss this. The accusation was
serious and it was falsely portrayed by the blogger as an intentional
act. In fact, if given
the chance, I would have asked to make a statement in the open forum
portion of the meeting saying what I have said here - I do not think
that it needed to be an agenda item.
Bottom line is that I DID NOT KNOW these taxes needed
to be paid on my home office. When I found out about it, I did
what I thought was right and took immediate action to fix it. After all, we are told to “Render unto Caesar...”.
After tonight's meeting,
my seat on the Council is no longer the issue as stated in the Channel 8
Video. After the City Attorney's comments about other cases
and the laws concerning it, the discussion turned to the City Charter
which contains something that could not be enforced.
It was very humbling to see so many people show up to
give support for me at this Council meeting. I thank God
for having people like you in my life. Those of you on my
Blog Email List know that I usually end
all my emails with, “You are not alone.” I know now….. I AM NOT
ALONE!
03-01-2010:
- City Council Meeting 03-01-2010:
- 06:30 PM, Workshop Session. As Usual, This is an open meeting and I encourage you to
attend.
- 07:00 PM, Regular Council Meeting.
- Please look over the Agenda -
Short Version or the
Long version with backup material.
There may be some items
that may be of special
interest to you.
- City Council meeting Special Session 03-02-2010:
- 06:30 PM, Special Joint Meeting with the LISD Board
of Trustees. At the Bolin Administrative Center. See the
Agenda.
- CAMPAIGN UPDATE:
- In just two short months, early voting starts for the yearly
City Elections. I will be running for a full 3 year term. See
the Voting
Schedule.
-
Signs: For those of you that have signs from last year’s
Election, please put them in your yards starting in April. Early
voting starts April 26 and a few weeks before will be good for
yards. Maria and I will be posting the signs in the public areas
about a week before early voting starts. If you want a sign for your
yard, I will ask for those who want one in late March or Early
April.
- What I need NOW is donations. I know money is tight everywhere
but money is needed for this campaign. See
donation page for more
information.
02-21-2010:
- Citizen’s Fire Academy accepting applications
The Lewisville Citizen’s Fire Academy, the closest
civilians can come to being a firefighter short of joining the
department, is accepting applications for its 2009 class. The free
10-week program runs from March 2 through April 27 and will include
instruction and training experiences in the classroom and in the
field.
The academy, which is open to Lewisville residents age
21 and older, is designed for people who have a genuine interest in
fire department operations and fire and life safety awareness.
Classes meet every Tuesday evening, 7-9 p.m., and once on a
Saturday. All sessions are taught by fire department personnel.
For information on the Citizen’s Fire Academy, please
call Division Chief Steve Carter at 972.219.3739. Media
contact: Division Chief Steve Carter, 972.219.3739
02-15-2010:
- City Council Meeting 02-15-2010:
- 06:30 PM, Workshop Session. As Usual, This is an open meeting and I encourage you to
attend.
- 07:00 PM, Regular Council Meeting.
- Please look over the Agenda -
Short Version or the
Long version with backup material. Some items
that may be of special
interest to you.
- Item 7 is an eminent domain item. Always important to
watch these closely. In this case, it is for the DCTA Rail
Operations and Rail Center. DCTA has eminent domain power, but only with approval
of the governing body of the affected municipality.
See pages 74-83 of the
backup material.
- Item 8 is about a sign variance. The
interesting point about this item is that the Old Town Design
Review Committee reviewed and approved it but the City Staff
recommends denial.
See pages
84-90 of the
backup material.
- Item 10 deals with the oil and gas wells in the City.
The City will be hiring a Technical advisor as a consultant for
inspecting these sites. The cost of utilizing a technical advisor is billed directly to the operator
of the well inspected.
See pages
103-110 of the
backup material.
- Just a reminder that the Early voting for the Texas Primary
Elections start Tomorrow 02-16-2010. The Primary
Election Day is March 2, 2010. See my page -
Texas Primary 101.
02-08-2010: City Council Retreat - After retreat Comments
and updates. The
Long Version of the Agenda has Backup Material that contains slides
of presentations. Here is a very brief summary:
Thursday, February 4, 2010
- 2009 Retreat Recap - City Manager, Claude King, gave an overview
of what was discussed in Last years Council Retreat.
- PD Staffing - Police Chief, Russ Kerbow, requested that the Council consider
hiring 13 Patrol officers and 11 other positions for the Budget
of 2010/2011. This amount will be inline with basic
minimal staffing (as compared to higher levels of medium and optimal
staffing) based on statistics and figures and a bunch of formulas
that were impressively presented. Should be on the agenda for the Budget
Retreat in August 2010.
- ED Policy - Economic Development Director, Nika Reineke, discussed several ideas and options for different areas of he City.
More will be discussed in future Council meetings.
- “Checkbook” Register - Putting the City Checkbook online.
We liked the City of Fort Collins Colorado site the best. This
is a good for better transparency of government. Hopefully
it will be online in the next few months. It did not seem as
it would take much to do it either.
- Project Labor Agreements - not enough support to do this.
We did not feel that it was necessary.
Friday, February 5, 2010
- E-Verify Contractor Requirement - I was the only one that
wanted e-verify as a requirement for our contracts and bids. I
made the motion to have staff draw up an ordinance similar to
Mission Viejo (California) or Huntsville (Alabama). I did not
get a second on the motion and therefore it died.
However, the other Council members wanted staff to draw up wording for a future meeting to add a paragraph to the contracts that if a contractor has been found guilty of
violating the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA of 1986) then they MAY be banned for up to 5 years.
Again, the official wording will be in a future meeting.
I am not opposed to this but I think that this DOES NOTHING helpful as legal employers are not supposed to violate IRCA anyway. E-verify would help them prevent IRCA violations in the first place.
- Taping of Workshops - This will require new equipment for
the workshop and replace 20 year old equipment for the Council
Chambers. Two of us wanted to get this started but the rest
wanted it to be a an item in the August 2010 Budget Retreat. I
suggested continuing with taping the way they have been but spend
the money on the microphones that we would use anyway on the full
conversion. It did not pass a vote. It will have to wait
until the August.
- Special Events -
Christmas Holiday at the Hall - The City has been losing about $30K per
year on the Christmas event. We were told that we can save
$70K by ending the Christmas event about 1:30 PM.
I would like to have seen the Christmas event would be more
successful. I was reluctant to shorten the Christmas event but
the majority was for it.
Western Day - They also wanted to move the $70K saved
from the change to Christmas to Western Day and make that the big
event of the year. To be a two day event starting Friday night
until 10:00 PM and all day Saturday until 10:00 PM.
July 4th Event - This costs the city about $35K. It was
discussed to cancel it, move it to the lake, or leave it at
the mall area. It will cost more at the lake. The
majority wanted to have the event at the mall.
Other Events - Please see the backup material and
slides from the agenda.
- Economic Development related (Closed Sessions) - I wish I
could discuss these items at this time. Though interesting and
exciting as they are, we are asked to not discuss. This is in
accordance with State Law.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
- Budget Projections/Reduction Prioritization - The
revenues and expenditures of the city were reviewed. With the
budget shortfall, a list of items was suggested that could be cut by
the City Manager. The consensus was to not cut any personnel
and maybe not hire if someone quits. Some projects were kept
frozen, and a freeze on hiring no critical positions.
Other items on the budget were frozen to same money.
- Sales Tax Options - With the budget shortfall and after
even more budget cuts, the City will need to increase revenue.
An option is to raise the Sales Tax from 8% to the State of 8.25%.
This is a better option than increasing property taxes. This
topic will need to be voted on by the Citizens and that might be in
the November 2010 election. This should be on future council
meetings.
- CIP Review - Discussed the CIP General Obligation debt issued for general
projects—mainly streets & drainage. New and improvements Interest and
Sinking (I&S) portion of property tax pays for servicing of
debt. Principal & interest payments for FY 2009-10 will
equal $8.425M... Yes, if we had no debt, we would have $8.425M. Current Outstanding Debt: $63,460,000. One
interesting point, if we did not add anymore debt and just
made the payments we could be out of debt in 2025 - or sooner if we
paid some off sooner. To save some money, some debt was
basically refinanced at a lower rate. No new debt was created.
We also discussed projects in the City.
- Health/Comp Plan Overview - Basically the City of
Lewisville is self insured. The current status of the Health
Plan and TMRS was discussed. We also discussed the pay scales
and rates of employee wages as compared to other similar cities.
- Wrap Up/Direction - This is when we discussed and gave
direction to staff like the summaries listed above.
02-04-2010: City Council Retreat - February 4-6, 2010
- This is in town at
the Hilton Garden Inn just south of the mall. All are open
meetings except for the Friday Afternoon meetings.
The
official Agenda is available online -
Short Version Agenda (Schedule) and the
Long Version Agenda with Backup Material. (Hint:
Right Click the long version and save it to your computer for faster
access.)
- Thursday, 02-04-2010, 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Topics
include 2009 retreat Recap, Police Department (PD) Staffing,
Economic Development (ED) Policy, Check book register, Project Labor
Agreements.
- MY COMMENTS:
- PD Staffing: I have always advocated that we need
more police officers. My personal opinion that I have
stated publicly is that we need, to start, at least 5 more
officers per shift (4 shifts makes that 20 officers).
Then reassess our needs again. I have spoken to our
police chief many times about the outstanding officers that we have in this City. I have ridden out
with officers four times on various shifts and I can assure
our citizens that our officers are very good at what they do.
I have encouraged him to look into increasing the staffing
of our police department. The police chief is going to give his assessment and report
on
this evening.
- Friday, 02-05-2010, 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Topics
include E-Verify Contractor Requirement, Taping of workshops,
special events. After lunch are closed sessions.
- MY COMMENTS:
- E-Verify Contractor Requirement: I requested that
we discuss an E-verify
participation requirement for the companies that receive our
bids/contracts.
Learn more about E-verify. Also, this is a
continuation from the meeting on
01-04-2010.
- Taping of workshops: I want more Government
transparency. Before I was elected, I went to meetings
for about two years. I noticed that many of the items
discussed are done in the non-taped open workshop meeting.
The staff has been looking at options to tape the workshops.
We are trying to do this as cheaply as possible but my view
is that the tests have not revealed a good audio quality.
- Saturday, 02-06-2010, 9:00 AM to 2:15+ PM. Topics include
Budget Projections/Reduction Prioritization, Sales Tax Options, Capital Improvement Program
(CIP) Review. Then After lunch, health comp plan, wrap up,
etc...
- MY COMMENTS:
- Very important topics this morning .... With the
shortfall of funds, what to spend money on and what to
postpone?
01-29-2010:
- City Council Meeting 02-01-2010:
- 06:00 PM, Workshop Session. As Usual, This is an open meeting and I encourage you to
attend.
- Topic will be a discussion regarding screening wall options.
- 07:00 PM, Regular Council Meeting.
- Please look over the Agenda -
Long version with backup material. Some items
that may be of special
interest to you.
- Item 6: Clarifying Noise Restrictions and Providing Exemptions
- Item 7: Parking Regulations: Prohibited Parking on Specific Streets
pertaining to LISD.
- Item 8: Related to the Special Events ordinance
01-22-2010:
- I have added a link to Chuck Baldwin's Article that came out
today that I wanted to share..... Today marks the 37th anniversary of the infamous US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, which, in effect, legalized abortion-on-demand nationwide.
... Click here for more.
- City Council Meeting 01-25-2010:
- 06:30 PM, Workshop Session. As Usual, This is an open meeting and I encourage you to
attend.
- 07:00 PM, Regular Council Meeting.
- Please look over the Agenda.
Short version or
Long version with backup material. Some items of
interest...
- Item 6: Approval of the Old Town Plaza Conceptual Design.
Take a look at the drawings in the Agenda pages 66 to 166 of
the
Long version. The designs start on page 136.
- Item 11: Consideration of Acceptance of a Report From the 2009/2010 Charter
Review Commission; and Provide Direction to City Staff. Look over the
recommended changes to the City Charter. The
changes are in red. See the
Agenda pages 179 to 223 of the
Long version.
- Note: Someone has pointed out that in the minutes from the
Charter review committee that I said the secretary did not have
to write every single word I said... She was taking notes
but when I made a comment, the keys started flying and I made
the comment half joking - as if everything I say is not that
important and thus it is taken out of context and twisted.
I was visiting the Charter review committee to see if they would
recommend term limits like other cities have.
01-20-2010: Texas Association of
Business Poll at
http://www.txbiz.org is much like the 'just for fun' polls that I
wrote about on 01-15-2010. It asks, "Who should BACPAC (TAB's Political Action Committee) endorse for Governor?". The txbiz
poll is located on the right side of the page. I do not know when
they will be taking the poll off. It did not indicate how many
people have voted.
I voted for for Debra Medina and it showed a pie chart
with only shades of blue that is hard to distinguish between shades.
I think it would have been better to show percentages and number of
votes. For all we know only 12 people voted.
Each color shade has a computer RGB color code. I used
my color sampler from Adobe PhotoShop program to check the color shades.
The largest part is Medina (28,28,255) and the second largest is Perry
(0,0,255). To make it easier to see, I gave each shade it's own
unique color for easy viewing.
This graphic snapshot taken & shaded 01-20-2010 about 2:30 PM
01-19-2010: Cross walk for
Evergreen Senior Living Apartments (ESLA). I went to the
transportation board meeting tonight where about 20 or more ESLA
residents came to show their support for a cross walk on Garden Ridge
Blvd. It was agenda Item 4. About two months ago, I had
requested that the Staff look at the costs and bring it to a vote a City
Council meeting for a vote. The staff chose to go the
Transportation committee route to do some research and study it a little
bit.
The ESLA residents are asking for is for some signage
and a painted crosswalk to help make it a little safer. But a
blinking light would not hurt either, restrict u-turns and other things
that make a crosswalk safer. ESLA residents know that the signs
will not make it 100% safer but it will make it somewhat safer.
The Staff representative advised against it stating
that they should walk a block North to Main street to the intersection
to cross thus adding about 40% more distance to make the trip across the
road.
The transportation committee meets once a quarter and
they have asked staff to do more research and voted to discuss it more
in the next meeting in April 2010. At that time, hopefully, the
committee will decide to vote yes or no and send a recommendation to the
City Council which is where the final decision will be made.
Q: How did the senior Citizen cross the
road?
A: We will have to wait and see...
That's the way I see it - John Gorena
01-15-2010: JUST FOR FUN... Online Polls about which candidate for the Republican nomination for Texas governor performed best in Thursday night's televised debate?
I am just posting links to online polls from City Newspapers or TV
stations.
If
you find others, please let me know. These polls check IP
addresses so that you can only vote once per IP - a simple check to try
and stop cheaters.
To watch the debate online see:
http://texasdebates.org/video.php
These polls are for amusement only, are not conducted scientifically,
and represent the opinions of site visitors. Since the polls will
go away after time, I took a snapshot at 24 hours after the debate.
In my opinion, these polls can show a trend - unless someone found a way
to really cheat a lot. Again, they are not scientific.
01-13-2010: I went to a I35E stake holders meeting today
and listened to the presentation from TXDOT. It seems that they
might start acquiring key property in the summer of 2010.
Construction along the middle section (it is what they call the area
from the Lewisville Lake bridge down through Lewisville to the 161 toll
way) may still not start until 2012 or 2013. They are saying
that they do not have enough money yet. Get up to date and more
accurate information at
http://www.keepitmovingdallas.com.
01-04-2010:
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