City of Kerrville to Trade Community for Feral Cats, Raise Taxes, Bring In The Big Dogs to Fight Petty Crime
The Kerrville City Council meets Tuesday with a 5 p.m. workshop and a 6 p.m. regular meeting, and the agenda touches the tax bill, the water bill, the municipal courtroom, the golf course, the pool, the mayor's seat on the EDC board, and every unowned cat inside the city limits. Three items are final readings. One creates a utility that didn't exist last week. One is filed under "routine."
Here is what's on the table, section by section.
Trading Community for Feral Cats
Ordinance 2026-23 rewrites Chapter 18, the city's animal code, and the first thing it does is strike the phrase "community cat" everywhere it appears and replace it with "feral cat." The old definitions of community cat, community cat caregiver, and community cat colony are deleted outright. In their place: a feral cat is "any cat that is too poorly socialized to be handled," a feral cat colony is three or more cats fed by someone who doesn't claim them, and a managed colony is one where every cat has been trapped, vaccinated, altered, returned, and monitored — the code spells the acronym out as TVARM.
The bigger change is who's allowed to feed them. Under the rewritten Sec. 18-31, it is unlawful to feed a feral cat unless you are a registered caregiver maintaining a registered colony. New Sec. 18-34 says anyone who wants to be a caregiver must register the colony with the city and sign a contract "that informs the potential feral cat caregiver of all city ordinances and rules." The 15-cat cap and the 25-yard buffer from businesses that Animal Control Officer James Lee described at the Aug. 25 workshop are not in the ordinance text council is voting on. They'll live in the contract, which council isn't voting on. Lee called the 15 "arbitrary" and said it can be adjusted; the ordinance leaves that to his office.
If a colony draws three or more nuisance complaints from two or more addresses in 12 months, the feeding defense goes away and the colony "must be relocated or the cats claimed by owners and re-homed per the city animal control officer's discretion." Feral cats impounded on a nuisance complaint are euthanized after the redemption period unless a caregiver claims them and can relocate them.
There's no word on where the cats will end up after they are euthanized. Kerrville Breaking News broke the story in 2018 about Kerr County selling euthanized cats to a research facility. Whether or not the new cat clause is to generate a new revenue stream, or if there is an agreement with the county to resume selling the remains of our cute little homeless friends is unknown, for now.
Kerrville's "community" partners, Kerrville Pets Alive and the Big Fix, are named as supporters of the new ordinance. There's been no discussion on whether they will remain as "community" partners or if they will also be listed as "feral" partners.
The rest of the rewrite is wider than the caption suggests. The liability insurance a dangerous-dog owner must carry goes from $100,000 to $500,000. If the city breaks into your car to pull out an overheating dog, the ordinance now says you pay for the window. Anyone whose premises an animal remains on for 72 hours is "rebuttably presumed" to own it unless they've reported it as a stray. Leaving an animal on a property that sits unoccupied more than half of any 30-day period is now abandonment, with an affirmative defense for business, vacation, or emergency. Chickens must be confined, kept in the rear yard, with litter collected weekly into a rat-proof, fly-tight container. Ferrets count against the four-animal household limit.
The agenda sheet marks it "Kerrville 2050 Item? No." It passed first reading 5-0 on Sept. 8 with no public hearing required and no speakers. Tuesday is final.
Raising Taxes
Ordinance 2026-21 gets its second and final reading. It levies $0.5995 per $100 of taxable value — $0.4603 for maintenance and operations, $0.1392 for debt service. That's up $0.0284 from last year's rate.
The city's own budget notice, read into the record Sept. 8, says the proposed rate "is equal to the disaster voter approval rate of $0.5995." The cover sheet for Tuesday's vote says the M&O portion was "calculated at the Disaster Rate." The no-new-revenue rate — the rate that would bring in the same money from the same properties as last year — is $0.5706. This is the second September in a row Kerrville has adopted the disaster maximum.
State law makes council say what that means out loud. Section Five, in capital letters: the rate "will effectively be raised by 6.70%" and adds about $28.90 a year in M&O taxes on a $100,000 home. The city's Taxpayer Impact Statement puts the median homestead — valued at $334,070 — at $2,003 for the coming year, $97 more than the no-new-revenue rate would produce and $80 more than last year.
The budget rides with it. Ordinance 2026-20, the FY2027 budget, comes back for second reading immediately ahead of the tax rate. Per the city's notice, it raises $1,054,846 more in property tax than last year's budget, a 5.6 percent increase; $314,674 of that comes from new construction, the remaining $740,172 from property that was already on the roll. Council has to take a second, separate motion "ratifying vote to adopt a budget that will require raising more revenue from property taxes than the previous fiscal year." That motion contains no dollar figure.
Both passed first reading 5-0 on Sept. 8. George Baroody and Madison Perez spoke at the budget hearing; Russell Mobley, Jeff Turner, and Baroody spoke at the tax hearing. Jeff Harris, the lone no on last year's rate, voted yes this time.
Also under Finance: item 3.A, the Financial Report for the month ended Aug. 31. The agenda sheet lists Exhibits: None.
Taxes are due Oct. 1, payable through Jan. 31 without penalty, or split half by Dec. 1 and half by July 1.
Rounding Up The Big Dogs, Denton Navarro Rodriguez Bernal Santee & Zech, to Fight Petty Crime
Kerrville Municipal Court handles Class C misdemeanors — traffic tickets, code violations, fine-only offenses. As of Oct. 1, the people prosecuting them will be lawyers from Denton Navarro Rodriguez Bernal Santee & Zech, the San Antonio firm that represents cities across Texas. Resolution 49-2026 makes the appointment, and Tuesday it sits on the consent agenda, item 5.D, between the retiree health policy and the Sept. 8 minutes. The consent agenda, per the city's own description, is for items "considered routine." It gets one vote, no discussion, unless a councilmember, staff, or a citizen pulls it.
City Attorney William Tatsch's cover memo is the most candid document in the packet. Since Michael Hayes resigned Feb. 2 and Tatsch was promoted April 28, the city has used the Danford Law Firm as special prosecutor "while the City considered whether to include an Assistant City Attorney position in the City's 2026-2027 budget." Danford is out Sept. 30. Meanwhile, Tatsch writes, "in light of the current number of clerks at Kerrville Municipal Court," the court has decided to consolidate its dockets to cut the number of court dates per month — which may drop the need for a prosecutor from eight days a month to four. Tatsch wants outside prosecutors for "several months" to figure out whether a full-time assistant is worth hiring at all.
Then the money. When the city first shopped for special prosecutors, quotes ran from $180 to $300 an hour. Two firms came in around $180: Danford, and the Bojorquez Law Firm in Austin. Denton Navarro will charge $230 an hour for associates and $250 for partners. Tatsch expects "the vast majority, if not all" of the work to be done by associates at $230. He acknowledges that's more than Bojorquez quoted, and says San Antonio is closer than Austin, so travel costs "begin to even out the hourly rate." No estimate of total annual cost appears anywhere in the packet. The cover sheet's expenditure line is blank.
The memo does not mention a judge. But the Sept. 8 minutes, up for approval Tuesday on the same consent agenda, record that council went into closed session on "Appointment of the Municipal Court Judge" at 7:45 p.m. and came out at 8:02 with a predictable "No action was taken." The item does not appear on Tuesday's agenda. Two weeks later, the bench is where it was.
Put the year together: city attorney gone in February, assistant city attorney slot empty since April, Public Utility Director Stuart Barron retired in the 1st Quarter, Police Chief Chris McCall retired June 19, 40-year KPD veteran Lt. Mary Krebs six days later, longtime Media Director Stuart Cunyus retired, two prosecutor firms, a clerk shortage the city attorney says is reshaping the court calendar, and a judge appointment that went into a closed room and came out empty. Every post that would explain a decision under oath has changed hands, or sits vacant, since the flood.
One more note on those Sept. 8 minutes. The workshop minutes list "Mike Hayes, City Attorney" among the executive staff present. Hayes resigned seven months earlier. The regular-meeting minutes from the same night correctly list Tatsch. Council will approve both sets as presented, on consent, unless someone reads them.
A New Utility Bill
Resolution 11-2026 declares stormwater drainage a public utility under Local Government Code Chapter 552, Subchapter C, creating a dedicated drainage fee that doesn't exist today. It sets a public hearing for Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. and orders notice published three times in the Kerrville Daily Times. It is the one item on the regular agenda marked "Kerrville 2050 Item? Yes," under Water/Wastewater/Drainage.
Read Section Six. Council "hereby adopts" the fee schedule in Exhibit A on Tuesday. Section Seven says charges take effect Jan. 1, 2027, "following a public hearing." The rate table is adopted first; the hearing on it comes five weeks later. The ordinance itself — the document that hearing is nominally about — is not in the packet. Public Works Director David Barrera presents it at the 5 p.m. workshop, item 2.B, an hour before council votes on the resolution that orders it published.
A utility fee is not a property tax. It is subject to none of the rate caps above, and it arrives on a different bill for the same properties.
What it costs: homes 2,350 square feet or smaller pay 0.75 of the base rate, 2,350–4,878 pay the full rate, 4,878 and up pay 1.25 times. Commercial and multi-unit pay actual square footage divided by 4,876 — yes, the exhibit uses 4,878 as the residential line and 4,876 as the commercial divisor, two lines apart. The base rate starts at $2.00 a month and climbs every year through FY2031.
| Fiscal year | Base rate | Home ≤ 2,350 sf (0.75 ERU) | Home 2,350–4,878 sf (1.0 ERU) | Home ≥ 4,878 sf (1.25 ERU) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2027 | $2.00 | $1.50 | $2.00 | $2.50 |
| FY2028 | $2.75 | $2.06 | $2.75 | $3.44 |
| FY2029 | $3.50 | $2.63 | $3.50 | $4.38 |
| FY2030 | $4.20 | $3.15 | $4.20 | $5.25 |
| FY2031 | $4.85 | $3.64 | $4.85 | $6.06 |
A mid-size home goes from $24 a year to about $58; a large home tops out near $73.
The workshop opens at 5 p.m. with item 2.A: a "2026 Flood update" from Assistant City Manager Michael Hornes. No exhibit is attached.
A few notes about this:
- ERU is "Equivalent Residential Unit." It's the standard billing unit for stormwater fees — a way to charge every property, house or Walmart, in multiples of one typical single-family home.
- Kerrville is using lot or building square footage rather than measured impervious area, which is the simpler, older approach — most newer Texas utilities (DeSoto, Kyle, Corpus Christi) measure actual paved and roofed surface per parcel from aerial imagery. Second, the 4,876 figure is doing quiet work: if that's meant to be the average home's footprint in Kerrville, it's high. A typical single-family house plus driveway runs 2,500–3,500 square feet of impervious cover. - A bigger ERU means each commercial property is divided by a larger number and comes out as fewer units — so commercial pays proportionally less.
The Mayor and the EDC Board
Item 8.B re-appoints Mayor Joe Herring Jr. to the Kerr Economic Development Corporation Board of Directors. Council gets one seat on that board; the summary says the mayor "currently serves in this capacity, as have Mayors before him," and "would like to continue." The item is flagged eligible for executive session under 551.074 and listed again under closed-session items at 9.C, meaning the reappointment of the mayor to the EDC board can be discussed behind closed doors before the public vote.
Retiree Health Coverage Gets Wider — Starting Oct. 1
Resolution 45-2026, on consent, loosens the rule on which city retirees can keep buying into the city's health plan. Under the 2023 policy, a retiree loses eligibility once the retiree or their spouse can get group coverage elsewhere, or when the retiree hits Medicare. The new policy drops the spouse: a retiree only loses eligibility through their own future employment or Medicare. The resolution says the City Manager "does not anticipate any increased financial obligation" — and notes the city may not have reached the 25,000 population that would make Chapter 175 of the Local Government Code, which grants this right, apply at all.
The change takes effect Oct. 1, 2026, "and only employees who retire after this date would be eligible." Chief McCall retired June 19. Lt. Krebs retired June 25.
Kerr 911 Is Running a Deficit
Resolution 44-2026, on consent, approves the Kerr Emergency 9-1-1 Network's 2027 budget: $483,000 in revenue against $572,980 in expenses, a projected deficit of $89,980. Executive Director Mark Del Toro's cover letter says it plainly: "The 2027 proposed budget is a deficit budget due to the unfunded mandate by the State of Texas" requiring every 911 entity to move to NextGen 9-1-1 core services, which "will force Kerr 9-1-1 to begin expending financial reserves." The monthly 911 service fee stays at $0.75. The capital account is projected to end 2027 at about $1.84 million. Council's role is approval; the 911 board adopted it Sept. 10.
Golf, the Pool, Mold Money, and the Old Police Station
7.C — Staff recommends handing management of Scott Schreiner Municipal Golf Course to Southern Golf Management under a three-year agreement with a 60-day termination clause. The RFP responses are not in the packet; the cover sheet says they're too large and are available at the City Secretary's office. Exhibits: None.
7.D — Up to $175,000 from the East Parkland Dedication Fund to finish the Olympic Pool. Staff says about $250,000 in work remains — IT and parks equipment, fencing, emergency lighting, final grading — with $43,000 left in the project budget and $26,000 found in savings. The East fund holds about $680,580; the West fund's $150,247 is not being touched.
7.B — $100,000 in TIRZ #1 money for mold remediation grants to businesses flooded inside the reinvestment zone, up to $5,000 per recipient, including reimbursement for work already done. The TIRZ board voted Sept. 9. The cover sheet's recommended action reads "Approve Resolution No. 26-2026," and the resolution's own second page is footered "Reso. 45-2026." It is Resolution 46-2026.
5.A — Second reading of the rezoning at 2001 Sidney Baker: 0.38 acres behind the Quality Inn & Suites, C-3 to R-2, so the hotel owner can build a house next door and "respond more quickly to daily hotel tasks." No public comment was received.
9.A — Executive session on "the sale of real property located at 429 Sidney Baker, former police station." Any action would come afterward under item 10.
8.A — Three seats open on the Zoning Board of Adjustment and Appeals Oct. 1. Applications from Jency Carson (reappointment) and Vanessa Von Dohlen; Jodie Tilman also under consideration.
What Fell Off the Agenda
On Sept. 8, Councilmember Kent McKinney objected to the Aug. 25 minutes, saying his intention had been "to not give money to the Airport," not the $25,000 the minutes recorded. The minutes note that "Mayor Herring advised to place the Airport Budget on the September 22, 2026 meeting agenda for further discussion." It isn't there. McKinney also asked for the Tivy Mountain condemnation on a future agenda. Not there either.
How to Watch, How to Speak
Workshop 5 p.m., regular meeting 6 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 22, Council Chambers, City Hall, 701 Main St. Spectrum Channel 2 or the live stream at kerrvilletx.gov. To speak on a workshop item, hand a speaker request form to the City Secretary before the workshop begins. For the regular meeting, before the item is called. Four minutes. To pull a consent item for separate discussion — the prosecutor contract, the retiree policy, the 911 deficit, the minutes — a citizen can request it.
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