City departments presented a bundle of supplemental budget requests and the council provided direction to staff that, in several members’ view, the city should use the voter-approval tax rate plus the unused increment (roughly a 4¢ option) to fund one-time street improvements. No formal tax-rate vote took place at the meeting; staff will present a proposed budget at the next meeting.

Staff said the general-fund street program is currently budgeted at about $800,000 for next year. Department requests presented during the supplemental review included a $185,000 dump truck for streets and a proposed roughly 10% increase to the materials budget (staff said current street‑materials funding is about $900,000). The public-works director also asked for an assistant public-works director with a hiring range of $100,000–$110,000 to provide strategic and capital-project oversight for a department that staff said employs 74 people.

Other department requests and clarifications presented to council included:
- Parks: replacement of the West City Park playground, improvements to a storybook‑trail area behind the library, commercial pool furniture, security cameras at the pool, a weather‑detection system and resurfacing the pool deck (Master Plan references noted).
- Cemetery: stonework and pavilion repairs and a mapping/survey project to digitize plot records so families can locate graves via an app; staff said some stonework may be paid from a cemetery trust fund.
- Library: an assistant library manager ($63,009.60 recurring reported by staff), replacement of seven public computers with Windows 11 units (7 × $2,003.22 = $16,001.14), and restroom renovations (men’s restroom $27,275; women’s restroom $25,275).
- Water and utilities: a proposed rebuild for storage tanks (staff estimated a placeholder of $500,000 for tank work), water‑meter purchases (staff requested an additional $100,000 to buy about 100 meters), replacement of roughly 35 hydrants per year (estimated $2,000–$4,000 each), and a proposed three‑person valve and hydrant crew to improve response. Staff said the city has about 1 million‑gallon capacity per storage tank and noted that some meters still require manual reads and that roughly 3,600 meters are in an LTE mix with many batteries depleted.
- Hilltop water plant/wastewater: vehicle and equipment replacements, a study for Willow Creek wastewater plant upgrades, pretreatment software to meet TCEQ inspection requests, and possible purchase of five acres adjacent to the wastewater plant for operational and easement clarity.

On tax-rate implications, staff presented the staff-recommendation “no-new-revenue” rate (0.5717881). Using that rate and the current valuations presented, staff said the average homeowner — with a median value of $178,838 as presented — would see a $21.50 increase next year on the city portion of the tax bill. Council members discussed using the voter-approval rate and the unused increment to capture roughly an additional $500,000; combined with the $800,000 baseline and proposed $100,000 in supplemental public-works funding, staff said that would yield nearly $1.5 million available for street improvements next year.

Council members emphasized that many supplemental requests are for deferred maintenance — “have to” items rather than wants — and asked staff to provide a detailed budget and justification. Staff will return with the proposed budget in the format previously presented; council direction favored prioritizing street projects using the available voter-approval increment, but no binding rate decision was made at the meeting.