After almost 2 years in existence, the City Council has sent its first formal communication to the residents of Sandy Oaks.
On February 11, 2016 the City Council approved the creation and mailing of a newsletter to be sent to property owners in Sandy Oaks. The newsletter was delivered on March 3, 2016.
The idea for the newsletter came from Alderman Karen Tanguma, who took her position on the City Council last November. Tanguma was given the responsibility of drafting the newsletter.
Previous requests from citizens for a newsletter were dismissed by City Council members, including former Alderman Earnest Gay, who maintained that mailing out information to people would be too expensive.
Topics of the newsletter include information about the contract with Tiger Sanitation, the City’s contract with the cities of Elmendorf and Selma for animal control, feral cats, the City Marshal position, the names of Council members and their positions, and a list of ordinances that assess fines.
None of the ordinances that involve fines are enforceable, however, because the city has never published them in the newspaper of record as required by Texas law.
Before March 3rd, the City has never spent money on communicating to the community other than running a city website. The website was missing ordinances and resolutions for more than half of 2015, and the existence of the website has only been announced by the city at City Council meetings.
Thank you for the acknowledge, however it was a collaborate effort. Together with Alderman Tremblay, we presented the idea for consideration to city council. The creation of the newsletter was a joint effort between myself and Mayor Ball, who finalized the final draft.
It is ridiculous it has taken so much time without the community knowing we were a city, ordinances were being passed without input or knowledge of their existence, and the leaders refusal to provide information until they had accomplished a majority of their own agenda.