No surprise, infrastructure dominated Gladewater city leaders’ discussions about the community’s budget for Fiscal Year 2024-2025.
It was on council members’ minds last week ahead of an official roll call vote to approve the coming tax rate. Unchanged since their prior discussion, the group unanimously set the 24/25 rate at 0.602087 per $100 valuation. It’s a moderate decrease from the current year; the city will collect more tax dollars following increases in appraised values.
The prevailing theme at City Hall in multiple rounds of talks and revisions to Gladewater’s financial plan was how to put more tax dollars toward repairing and improving roads while simultaneously fixing and upgrading the water and sanitation systems. A recurring comment from Gladewater’s elected officials as well as city employees was how to take residents’ feedback into account when crafting spending priorities for the coming year.
Early in the budget process, the city leaders injected more funds into street work. Later, after all the budget’s necessities were covered, they balanced the budget by allocating remaining revenues toward improving animal control pens (about $5,000, the bulk of it for concrete), code enforcement and safety ($50,000) as well as parks and emergency services facilities alongside other expenditures.
“I think everybody’s on the same page to move forward with taking care of the city and the infrastructure,” says Gladewater City Manager Charlie Smith. “They know that’s a priority. We know we’ve got to get things fixed.”
Likewise, the city officials are pursuing more efficiency across the board, whether it’s reducing overtime in Public Works, completing more projects in-house as opposed to using contractors or putting spare materials toward for projects like the animal control facility. The budgeting process itself worked more smoothly, enhanced with more detail to help leadership make decisions and employees execute them efficiently between Oct. 1 and Sept. 3, 2025.
In Public Works, employees are specializing in recurring tasks, Smith noted, and they’re finding ways to pause projects to finish the next day instead of putting in time outside normal business hours.
“We’ve got a water crew, we’ve got a road crew, we’ve got a crew that does the sewer backups,” he added. “That has really worked well.
“There’s still some bugs in the system that we’re working on, but we’ll get that taken care of too. It’s a lot better than it was.”
Smith regularly praises Gladewater’s firefighters for stepping in and taking on projects.
Likewise, “The police department has really stepped up with what they’re doing,” further aligning GPD with Texas Best Practices for Law Enforcement. “All insurance carriers, they like it when police departments do that.”
Code enforcement will be more robust in the coming year as well with a new enforcement officer to be hired and Gladewater FD Capt. Kevin Palmer completing his certification as a peace officer to become fire marshal.
“One of the things this council has been very adamant about is the retention of good employees,” Smith said. A talking point during recent budget discussions was to continue the city’s effort to increase compensation to get away from Gladewater’s reputation as a ‘training ground’ for civil servants. “We do have a lot to offer – benefits, insurance, holidays, things of that nature.”
Of course there’s turnover, he added, and the goal is to reduce the frequency. The municipality continues to strengthen its team.
“We’re going to get the right people in place and not decline.”
Leadership is key, Smith noted, and City Hall’s key employees have embraced a hands-on attitude,
“The supervisors, department heads, those guys are not afraid to be in the middle of what’s going on. The camaraderie is really good. To me, that’s a sign of a healthy environment.”
Those same department leaders have a particular focus on revitalizing the city’s facilities – overt ime and, ideally, drawing less on taxpayer dollars.
Lee-Bardwell Public Library Director Brandy Winn is the tip of the spear in that regard, helping Gladewater’s police chief, fire chief and others identify and pursue grant opportunities to cover both essentials and ‘wish list’ items.
“I think that’s something we really needed to utilize,” Smith said. “We’re going to work on the grants. Anything we can reach out to get for our departments, we’re going to do that.”
– By James Draper