Nixon council accepts Rancho subdivision plans

Nixon City Council members were excited Monday, April 21, to officially accept plans for a new Rancho subdivision on the north side of town that will see the building of nine new houses.

Subdivision developer Shawn Shaw presented the plat to the council at their regular meeting, during which City Administrator Darryl Becker told the council he was pleased with all the steps that had been taken to prepare the property.

“I did walk through and (Public Works Director) Jeremy (Bustos) has been through there,” Becker said. “The water results have come back and everything has been cleared on the water test and the sewers are in and I think they have one more light to go up. Everything else is done and they are where you can file with the county clerk and he has the plats for you to look at.”

Shaw said preliminary plans and drawings have already been drafted for all nine houses and he has already had a soil test performed and the slabs have been engineered for the homes. In addition to the nine homes, there will be two commercial lots and a small lot on which the billboard for the subdivision will sit.

“All the houses are 3-2-2 except for one that is 4-2-2 and they range anywhere — and I’m just counting the house, I don’t count front porches or covered back porches or garages — but they start at about 1300 square feet and go up to around 1600 square feet,” he said.

Asked if he was happy with the drainage, Shaw said he hadn’t seen a lot of rain on the property yet, but he hoped it would be sufficient.

“We’ve rerouted the water that came through from the city and now there’s a large detention pond so it should handle it,” Shaw said. “I’ve had a couple of people say there was water standing on that property before, but I don’t know if they’re talking about the flood that was where my grandparents’ house was washed away, you know, in 1989, or what. The only part of it that is a little flat is where the detention pond is and none of the property is in the flood plain.”

Shaw praised Becker and Bustos and the cooperation he has received from Nixon officials.

“Can I say what a pleasure it has been to do something here at Nixon?” he asked. “The city manager has been great. Jeremy’s been great. Every time I've had a problem or something, sometimes my contractor doesn't give me 100% of the true story, and I've been able to come Jeremy and Darryl and they always can help me out.

“It's been very easy working here. I don't know why you don’t have more things happening here because I appreciate everything you have done.”

“We’re working on it!” Mayor Ellie Dominguez said.

In other action, Becker unveiled a new financial report to the council using the new software the city recently installed. The payment report is all income which came in to the city for the month of March, while the council report is to show all the accounts payable or expenditures the city had for the same month.

In the past, the city had these reports listed for the general fund and the utility fund, or as Becker explained, “when you have your home account and you have a business account — that's the way the books were always kept prior to and you've had your transfers as well.”

“Now, basically what we're doing is we're moving everything to one account using the GL (general ledger) and identifying the income and expenses,” Becker said.

Finance director Melissa Pompa said the city will be “consolidating cash” and “getting rid of all the other legal accounts that we’ve had.”

“All of that consolidated cash is going to be preventing us from having to do all of these transfers from one fund to another,” Pompa said. “We're still going to have these separate GLs — like you said, we're going to have the different general ledgers that are going to be each department.

“They're going to have their own budget, like they always have, but instead of it being from 13 different accounts that we have to reconcile and keep track of and get audited, we're going to have that all under one account.”
Pompa said the city can still have its money market accounts to earn interest, but the accounting simplification will “streamline our finances to where we don't have to have so many different buckets that we have to check to make sure each bucket has enough in there to pay whatever it is to pay.”

Pompa said that “over the years, finances have evolved, and this is one of the things we were not evolving with the times what was out there available for our bookkeeping purposes.”

“This is the evolution that we're seeing in the systems going forth for cities and municipalities that are handling our software,” Pompa said. “Our next step is we’ll be able to track our assets, to be able to depreciate our assets out, so we can pull those reports without any problems. Our auditors can ask us, ‘What is this furniture going to cost?’ ‘How long do we have before we depreciate it out?’ And we'll be able to know that on a more efficient basis.”