The Odessa City Council voted to dissolve the tax incentive committee and adopted a new employee benefits package Tuesday night, but postponed an in-depth discussion about changing the city’s bathroom ordinances.
Assistant City Manager Cristina Burns told the council the tax incentive committee has been reviewing criteria and guidelines for tax abatement every other year and checking compliance with existing agreement requirements every year since 2011.
On Aug. 16, the committee discussed asking the Odessa Development Corporation to take on its responsibilities and the ODC board agreed it would be willing to do so at a Sept. 10 meeting.
Councilmember Mark Matta abstained from the vote as he’s on the committee, but the other six members passed the motion to dissolve it and transfer its duties to the ODC.
The council also signed off on the employee benefits package presented to the council by Gallagher Benefit Services on Sept. 10. It will go into effect Jan. 1.
City Manager John Beckmeyer presented the council with two ordinances to consider as they look at amending the city’s laws concerning entering restrooms of the opposite sex.
One of them was worked on by the city’s legal department and another one has already been before a court and “survived the scrutiny of the ACLU,” Beckmeyer said.
Councilmember Chris Hanie also has a proposed ordinance he plans to submit for consideration.
“My ordinance, it doesn’t just cover the city. It covers, I mean, not just city property. It covers the whole city, everybody’s private stuff,” Hanie said. “That’s where this is needing. Not just in the city, it’s needing all over the whole city, individual restaurants, dressing rooms, schools, all of it.”
Beckmeyer told the council the city needs to have ordinances in place so it has standing should the federal government step in and pass sweeping legislation.
Mayor Javier Joven agreed, saying there will be a “huge assault on local control” should Vice President Kamala Harris become our next president.
One member of the audience, Tracy Austin, questioned the need for such an ordinance. She asked how many calls OPD has received about someone of the opposite gender going into a restroom and she wondered how such an ordinance would be enforced.
“How are you going to tell who is a female and who is a male? You can’t without DNA and anatomy checks,” she said. “Do you intend to have people carry their birth certificates?”
She said the whole thing seems “a little bit silly” to her.
“I think we should move on from imaginary problems and talk about problems that are wide scale and do affect a lot of Odessans, for example, the water, trash pickup and even our understaffed police department,” Austin said.
Another audience member, Jeff Russell, told the council it’s not an imaginary problem and recounted how his teen-aged granddaughter encountered a man in women’s clothing in the women’s restroom at the fast food restaurant where she works.
“I’d just like to ask you guys to give it serious and due consideration,” Russell said.
A third audience member, Tim Harry, agreed with Russell.
“We need to get on top of this before it is a problem. Somebody with a perversion doesn’t need to be in a restroom with my kids, doesn’t need to be in a restroom with your kids and your grandkids,” Harry said.
The item will be placed back on the agenda in two weeks.
The council voted to approve, for the first time, the 2024 tax levy. The FY23 tax rate is 48.3791 cents per $100 property valuation. The proposed rate is 46.6275. The No-New Revenue Tax Rate is 46.2503.
In other matters, the council voted unanimously to replace a heating and cooling unit at the animal shelter that caught fire June 26 using funds from the police department’s training and academy facility project account.
Burns told the council the unit will cost roughly $283,000, the city’s deductible is $100,000 and insurance will make up the difference. She said once the insurance kicks in, the OPD account will be reimbursed.
She noted the manufacturer’s warranty on the unit expired in April.
It will take 14 weeks to get the replacement unit and in the meantime, the city is renting a unit, she said.
Hanie asked Burns to investigate if the electrician on the animal control project was the same one who did some work at one of the city’s parks.
He didn’t name the park, but Hanie said he experienced an issue there recently because the wiring was done wrong.
“We need to find out if this was the same deal because if that spark, then that should fall on the electrician not us,” Hanie said.
Assistant Odessa Police Department Chief Matt Davidson also gave an update on the police department’s ARPA-funded projects Tuesday night.
He said contractors will begin replacing OPD’s elevator in about six weeks and all of the materials have been purchased and the contracts for the lobby restroom renovation project are under review.
The council also signed off on a contract for the demolition of the police department’s 43,000 square-foot parking garage at North Lee and West 3rd Street.
The three projects combined are about $194,000 under budget so Joven instructed Davidson to begin looking at other projects that could be funded by American Rescue Plan Act funds.
