The Dublin City Council reviewed plans for upcoming events during its regular meeting Monday night, which also featured the 2020 audit and Board of Adjustments action.
Representatives of two groups were on-hand to request street closures for their events.
Juanita Torres, on behalf of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce was requesting the closure of a portion of the 100 block of S. Grafton, the 100 block of E. Elm and the 100 block of S. Park (net to Wright Park for the second annual Hispanic Heritage Festival. The event is set for Oct. 1 and will feature vendors, live music, a car show and much more. Council members in attendance unanimously approved the closure.
Mike Pruitt also requested the closure of East Elm from Patrick to Camden as well as a portion of the 200 block of S. Grafton. Pruitt is organizing the Rylan Strong Car and Bike Show in memory of his son who “won the battle with cancer his way” in March this year.
“The goal is to help families and children fighting the same battle,” said Pruitt.
The event will feature barbecue and live music and will end with a candlelight vigil. The closure was unanimously approved.
Jeff Slaton with Diamond Cross Rodeo also addressed the council about the return of the rodeo at the City Park Arena Sept. 9-10 at 7:30 p.m. Slaton said the event last year was a success and Diamond Cross re-invested more than $3,000 in local scholarships and donations to local organizations. Slaton also said they are discussing a St. Patrick’s Day rodeo in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce.
Jeremy Shell of BMY was also on-hand to deliver the audit for the year ending Sept. 30, 2020, noting that the city was in good financial standing with a couple of control deficiencies which were already corrected since the year represented in the audit.
“[2020] was a year of tremendous changeover [in the city],” said Shell. “We’ve already seen improvement subsequent to that year… I’m confident [these issues] have been addressed.”
Issues included a lack on controls in transfers resulting in errors with the largest being over $600,000; and a $1.5 million error in the billing module where a bill was mistyped and corrected on the customer side but went uncorrected in the billing side. Shell said the city staff was aware of the latter issue and had a fix provided to him quickly.
The council, acting as Board of Adjustments, approved the construction of a second carport at 402 W. Travis to house a RV. A variance was needed since the property already had the maximum number of structures for a single family residence under the building code.
The council also unanimously approved the sale of a right of way at 304 W. Harris after it was realized that the city owned a portion of the property behind the fence line. City Manager Bobby Mendez reported there were no issues with roadways or infrastructure in transferring ownership of the land.
The council also approved GrantWorks and Jacob and Martin for seeking grants and engineering on renovation for the historic train depot.
The council also approved an agreement between the City of Dublin and Erath County for subdivision regulations in the ETJ (city limits to 1.5miles outside the city). (Keegan McInroe abstained from the vote.)