Jersey Village City Council discusses trash and recycling services, City Campus project, firefighter staffing

Jersey Village City Council members decided against billing residents directly for trash and recycling services, discussed the City Campus project funding, and planned to maintain the six-firefighter minimum staffing number at the July 17 budget work session.

The big picture

The fiscal year 2026-27 budget book proposed billing residents directly for trash and recycling services to potentially lower the maintenance and operations tax rate, but council decided against doing so, with residents continuing to be unhappy with previous water bill increases, council member Simon Hughes said.

City Manager Austin Bleess said the city should receive the Harris Central Appraisal District tax rate calculations by July 24. However, meeting documents show a preliminary 3.28% increase in property tax revenue for FY 2026-27 compared to the previous year based on a tax rate of $0.0821.

Hughes suggested bringing the first phase of the project to voters in an $8 million-$9 million bond. Funding for the City Campus project has been unsuccessfully brought to voters multiple times, most recently in November 2025, with 804 votes in favor and 959 votes against.

Hughes said he’d like to discuss the possibility of a bond due to recent changes to council. Voters elected two new members in May, Michael Brittain and Brian McCauley, and the upcoming Place 3 appointee that will be sworn in July 21, as previously reported by Community Impact.

Finance Director Jennifer Brown said she agreed that debt would be an appropriate way to pay for the project, but said the city has the money to use. Council member Brian McCauley said he believes the new public works building is a need for the city, but is against using debt to complete the project.

Council decided to pause their discussion of the bond in order to wait for the Place 3 appointee.

In other news

According to the proposed FY 2026-27 budget book, the Jersey Village Fire Department completed a review of emergency responses spanning April 8, 2025 to June 24, 2026 that showed emergency medical calls were more frequent than structure fires or other major incidents.

Based on the analysis, the proposed municipal budget reduces minimum staffing from six to five firefighters in the case of call-outs—potentially saving $200,000 in overtime payments. In the May 18 work session budget memo, JVFD requested three shift commanders.

McCauley said he sees the overtime expenditures as an indication that the fire department needs more personnel.

“A lot of times people, what they don’t understand is, you're not paying firefighters for the things that they do,” McCauley said. “You’re paying them for things that they might have to do.”

The plan

Council discussed hiring an outside consultant to perform a staffing assessment to better understand the staffing needs of JVFD from an unbiased perspective, and keeping the staffing minimum at six for now. Bleess said it would likely be around nine months until the council would see those assessment results.

Council member Connie Rossi said council can amend the budget later once they receive the results from the study.

“This is not an area where I’m willing to say, ‘Well, yeah, let’s cut the budget and let’s accept a little bit of risk,’” Hughes said, “because that’s not a risk that I personally, as a resident, want to bear, and I don’t want other residents to bear it.”

Looking forward

Several key dates and deadlines leading up to FY 2026-27 municipal budget adoption include:

• July 21: regular meeting and appointment of Place 3 council member
• Aug. 17: deadline to call for City Campus Phase 1 bond
• Aug. 18: regular meeting and municipal budget adoption

Jersey Village City Council is slated to meet July 21 at 7 p.m. in the Civic Center Auditorium at 16327 Lakeview Drive, Jersey Village, for a regular meeting.