Nixon council rejects request to rescind brush ordinance

Nixon City Council members stood firm and voted to take no action on rescinding a $10 fee per month brush fee assessed to residents on their utility bills during their regular monthly meeting on Dec. 17.

Resident Virginia Pena asked the council to consider rescinding the brush ordinance which set the fee, claiming many residents had no idea it had even been passed until they received a higher utility bill.

“I recently went around because we ended up with a bill that had things on it and nobody was ever notified,” Pena said. “As I talked to people, I found out that other people were just as shocked as me> Some were put into really bad situations with everything being raised all at once with no notice.”

Pena said she had a petition with her signed with 250 names and had several more pages at home that she did not bring with her.

“These fees cost a lot of people that are low income, people that they were living on a budget,” Pena said. “A lot of them are asking, ‘Why are we having all these other things, we’re having parades, and then we’re getting slammed with things like these fees?’”

Pena said businesses in Nixon are also being hit with the brush fee and most of them have dumpsters already on their property

“It's kind of like, you know, they're paying double, they're paying for a big dumpster and they're gonna pay an extra fee for the city just for an extra 10 bucks,” Pena said. “You know, we're all for things happening, but we'd like to be notified and we'd like to know what's going on so we can prepare for these things.”

Pena said some people reported seeing utility bills that were $40 to $60 per month higher than their previous average and being concerned about how they would afford to keep paying for their utilities with limited income.

“Yes, I know, it's legal (to charge the brush free) but is it really right? Can you find another place to take it from?” Pena asked.

Alderman Justin La Fleur said the council cannot just rescind the ordinance legally.

“We cannot reduce or take away that $10 because it is passed by ordinance in our budget,” La Fleur said. “We cannot legally do that. It’s not considered an emergency. We cannot restrict or deviate from our revenue that was approved in our ordinance. We can’t legally have a reduction in a budget that we approved through ordinance that we levied taxes against.”

La Fleur asked City Attorney Eddie Escobar to comment and Escobar said that “in order to amend a budget that was adopted by ordinance, to change it would also have to be by ordinance.”

“The problem is the Local Government Code has rules with regards to the reduction of the budget and the reasons that a budget can be reduced,” Escobar said. “According to Councilman La Fleur’s numbers, the $10 a month fee for brush would reduce the city's budget by $114,000. That being said, there can be an upward adjustment on budgets — that's done all the time and their line item budget changes. But when the revenue has changed and it's decreased, I would recommend that essentially the city would have to have another budget workshop.

“The reason for that is because the money coming out of the city is not going to change — the bills are the bills. This is changing the money coming in to the tune of $114,000, so because the money going out is not going to change but the money coming in is going to change, I would recommend to see where this money can come from or where cuts can be made.

“As far as my opinion is concerned, I believe that  it would be in the best interest for the citizens to look at the numbers as a whole, see what the $114,000 a year reduction is going to do to the budget, and if necessary, make changes somewhere else in the budget so the money going out isn't affected by the change on the money coming in,” Escobar added.

Pompa said community members had the opportunity to attend council budget workshops in the summer and fall, during which she only remembered seeing residents Adolph Trigo and Donald Hoffman in the audience.

“We advertised it and we put it out there on the internet and it was posted, too, right? ‘This is what

our budget was going to look like, and we were going to adopt it.’ So it was made available to the public to be able to see what we're working on,” Pompa said.

“We had three budget workshops that are all public. We had one proposal of the budget that anybody could have came in and raised their concerns with and then we also had a hearing to pass the budget on a different council meeting, so, at least five different instances where people could have voiced their concerns,” La Fleur said.

Pena told council members she was upset because there was not a master fee document distributed to citizens or posted online that included the brush fee or street fee that were added by the council to this year’s budget.

“I’m just saying — people didn’t know about this,” Pena said.

“They’re line item by line item in our budget, which is the same thing,” La Fleur responded. “If you go online right now you can go look at our budget. And it says bulk brush pickup, $114,000. That was all presented to the public to oversee whatever they wanted to do.”

Council members made a motion to take no action on the brush ordinance and voted 4-1 with only Patsy Vigil Scherrer voting against the motion.