Laura Weber, communications officer and event coordinator, came to the council with a revised proposal of the ice rink shortening the time it would be active after speaking with city staff about the needs of the rink.
“I’ve met with our ice rink vendor, the interim city manager, and the department heads to evaluate what it would take to deliver an experience again in a way that is both successful and sustainable,” she said. “While the rink was incredibly well received by the public, we found that it requires a high level of coordination and a substantial time commitment from staff, particularly during a season when many employees are hoping to take personal time off.”
Weber said that after working with Public Safety Director Carol Riddle, three staffing options were laid out from minimal coverage to maximum coverage of the rink. Riddle said that she based these schedules from her previous experience with event managing for city sponsored events.
Travis Askins, the director of Aledo Public Works, also spoke to the council during the meeting and said that last year the ice rink required some public works employees to put in more than 300 hours-worth of overtime to manage the rink with one employee getting more than 400 hours. The total amount of overtime paid to public works for the month of December 2024 was $11,130.90.
“Someone from public works worked every day in the month of December, sometimes multiple people,” he said.
Council member Todd Covington asked how morale was like in public works while working the ice rink and Askins said “horrible” and the workers saw the ice rink like a chore.
“Because they would have to work in the cold all day during the day, then they would have to work from about 4-11 in the evening and then had to come back to work the next day and work during the day,” Askins said.
Weber acknowledged that she did not have all the information about the needs of the rink and said she found out about the staff constraints after submitting a leave request for the holidays and having it be denied due to the ice rink staffing needs being unknown at the time.
“That led me to ask our former city manager and around to find out what the staffing requirements really needed to be because I, up to that point, was under the impression that as long as we were going to downplay the parking lot attendance then we could just allow the third party to operate and we could go on with our lives, work our staff duties and go home,” she said.
Members of the council expressed their concern with not having this information when the ice rink was originally voted on, and pushed for transparency and honesty from all staff to make sure a situation like this wouldn’t happen again.
“I could accept that there was an investment that we did with the ice skating. What I can’t accept is the human factor and the human investment that has to happen where we might lose staff or something like that,” council member Shawna Ford said.
After the presentation the council decided to cancel the ice rink all together.
“That’s the last thing you want is staff members to be horrible morale-wise during the holidays,” council member Nelson Rowls said. “As far as I’m concerned, let’s scrap the rink. Let’s move forward.”
Along with the ice rink presentation, the council also approved Weber’s proposal to cancel Aledo Fest for this year. Weber said that considering things like community feedback, sponsorship potential, and internal capacity she believes focusing on the two signature events of Summer Blast and Christmas Tyme in Aledo will lead to better quality over quantity in experiences.
“With more focus on two events, we can work to elevate our offerings and attract more regional visitors into Aledo providing greater economic benefit to local businesses.” Weber said.
New city council member appointed
After coming out of executive session, the city council approved the appointment of Ben Clark to Place #1 on the city council.
Clark said that when he saw the seat had opened up he wanted to pursue it to give back to the city.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of things in Aledo with four kids here, three that gone to Aledo,” he said. “I want to be able to serve and participate in water rate board, and the home rule board.”
Updates on budgets and buildings
In other board business, interim city manager Mark McDaniel had three main items to present to the council during the meeting including:
For the investment report McDaniel said that interest rates were doing well compared to years past.
Expenditure side water collection was significantly more because of sewer repairs.
McDaniel said that in the future he will work to streamline some line items on the budget to help clean it up to help prevent confusion and help do better projections in the future. He assured that the details will still be clear to look at and understand.
For the investment report McDaniel said the city is in great shape and over the required 102% collateralization investments and is instead at 114%.
For the initial overview of the proposed FY2025-2026 budget, McDaniel showed a presentation highlighting the general and utility fund’s revenues and expenditures, the Economic Development Corporation funds, and bond payments for the year.
Some key general fund expenses include:
The key general fund revenues lie in sales tax and property tax with an increase in the sales tax budget of 2025 by 9%.
Some of the main utility fund expenses include:
There was also a proposal from McDaniel to potentially lower the tax rate for the 2026 fiscal year.
For more information about the proposed budget the presentation can be found here: community-news.com/stories/aledo-2026,127208
McDaniel also gave an update about the new city council building, which he said is to be at substantial completion by mid-December. The city council toured the building earlier that day and he showed where the city was in the budget for the building and how the project has scaled back in both space and cost since the project began.
“We started out in 2022 with a much larger building, over 33,000 square feet and today, our design and building is just over 23,000 feet square feet,” he said.
For more information about the new city hall the presentation can be found here: community-news.com/stories/city-hall-0725,127209.
Other board business
The board also approved moving the city council meetings to the first and third Thursdays every month. The next city council meeting will be on Aug. 7.
Also on the agenda:
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