Council approves supplying cell phones

By Laura Hardt

Anvil Herald Reporter

At the May 13 Castroville City Council meeting, Mayor Bruce Alexander and council discussed providing cell phones for themselves and city staff. Personal cell phone use for city business is not prohibited; however, it is subject to open records for the city business portions of its use.

Alexander was in favor of having a city phone and publishing that number so people could get a hold of him at any time. Police Chief James Kohler and his department use FirstNet phones, developed for disaster readiness, for reliable and secure communication even when other networks go down. 

Other council members were comfortable with using their personal phones and publishing that phone number. City Administrator Scott Dixon said the cost was $36/month and the phone was free. 

“Certainly, the council’s adopted budget is capable of paying for the city phones. It’s never been a cost issue for a person to get a phone,” he added.

Alexander left it up to personal choice for council members and staff to receive a city phone. Dist. 5 Bob Lee made the motion for any elected official or appropriate staff to receive a city issued cell phone if desired and that the city will ensure communications received on personal phone are kept in a record format that follows city policy. The motion received a second and was passed.

Council discussed the idea of reviewing the city ordinances on a bi-annual basis to keep up to date on current needs. City Secretary Debra Howe advised council that every ordinance has an index that lists the date the ordinance was approved and the subject of the ordinance.

Alexander said, “Every ten years after the Texas Legislature meets, they produce a new local government code. We are tied by a general law city. Our ordinances have to be supported by state law. As those laws change and they are changing every session, we need to update our ordinances to match what the laws have changed.”

Merz replied, “I think that staff reviewing our ordinances and forwarding anything relevant to council is appropriate. And I’d also just like to note that they do this often with help from TML (Texas Municipal League) with the legislature updating stuff. However, going line by line with all of our ordinances and trying to resource it back to the Texas Local Government Code -- that’s going to take a whole lot of staff or attorney time, that’s not going to be cheap. I also think that there are a few, more than a few things, that are on council’s plate right now… a lot of those are more pressing than trying to resource, line-by-line, the whole ordinances.”

Dist. 3 Phil King agreed with Merz. 

“We do get informed of changes from Legislature through our attorney, through TML. Scott and his staff are pretty good about informing us when we have to change stuff. Same thing with the (police) chief and the off-road vehicles and state law. I do think we need to remind ourselves annually, like our Ordinance says, what these procedures are.”

Dist. 1 Sheena Martinez also agreed. “We do have a lot more pressing issues, like when we are going to discuss the Unified Development Ordinance stuff. And, yes, it is important to review… and I agree with everybody else,” she commented.

Alexander moved on to review the process of planning future agenda items for city council meetings. 

Cutoff time for items to be placed on the agenda is tight, and before the agenda can be published, it must be reviewed by the mayor and the city attorney.  Both council and staff agreed to work on agenda planning to help streamline the process. The next city council meeting is scheduled for May 27, at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall.