On October 12, 2026, the City Commissioners held their first meeting of the month, beginning with a discussion about substandard structures.
“We’re going to begin today by just talking about substandard structures and the guidelines for that and just kind of a reminder and education for all of us,” Mayor Mike Borger said. “I’ve spend some time looking into it and I’m hoping we can have an open discussion here so we understand how it all works. I would like to just thank Mr. Cary Rushing and his team for what they’ve done to help clean up Pampa. Everybody sees it, so I appreciate everybody that has made that happen. We’re on a really good track, and we just need to continue on. There’s more to do and we’ve got some new angles to do that.”
Mayor Mike then asked Code Enforcement Officer/Building Official Cary Rushing to step up up to the podium in case anyone had any questions.
“As far as I know, the guidelines as far as substandard structures are covered in Article 3.08 in the City Code and that was amended in 2023,” Mayor Mike continued. “It covers how it works and the way the substandard structures get reported primarily for your team, but it can also be any city enforcement officer in the way the language reads in Article 3.08.033, and that can be like the city manager, police officer, building official, code enforcement officer, director of public works, fire marshall, and any of their designated representatives, even a guy driving a truck down an alley. Is that true?”
“Anybody can report it,” Cary said. “Those are basically guidelines of who can make the report, but anybody can make a report of something they believe is a substandard structure, and when they make those reports, we’re just the group that’s obligated to check into it and to go the next steps. Generally, we’re the ones who request an administrative search warrant from the Municipal Court and then we execute those prior to bringing it to you guys.”
“Then it comes to the building standards commission, and that’s us,” Mayor Mike said.
“That’s correct. Once we’ve deemed that it is deserving to come here. Every one of them that is reported-we had one reported this weekend, and we went and looked at it and it meets no criteria without ever even going inside. It’s an occupied structure and it does have several other violations. A lot of people believe that if there’s numerous violations, such as tall weeds and grass, vehicles parked in the yard, junk and debris in the yard, and things of that nature, they deem it as substandard or dangerous, but that’s not always the case. Mr. Guymon was nice enough to give us a pretty good list of things that when you compound them, make it a substandard structure. A lot of these structures, while they do have violations, are not substandard or dangerous. There’s numerous things that they are, but it’s not those.”
“So that’s the way it gets looked at by this commission, and there’s one other way,” Mayor Mike continued. “The mayor, believe it or not, can bring a substandard structure to this building standards commission. Once it comes to the building standards commission, the decision is on this commission based on your recommendation. I know we’ve been really focused on residential and demolition. We haven’t focused very much on repair. That’s covered in 3.08, and that’s something we haven’t really utilized. Another thing that I think we really haven’t utilized is non-residential commercial properties. Right now, there’s so many people going down Highway 60 and 70, and they’re seeing what we’ve seen for a long time and a lot of it is substandard and it doesn’t look too great. We’ve got people considering whether they want to make Pampa their home, raise their kids here, so I think some of the stuff in the future we need to address are repairs.”
“That and once we get it to the substandard if it’s commercial, we’re obligated then to abate asbestos and things like that, and all of those things cost a lot of money,” Cary said. “This past year, we demo’d 31 residential structures at a cost of $208,000. We’re in the process of doing one small commercial structure, and we’re over $20,000 and we haven’t even started running equipment. That was just the asbestos assessment, the air monitoring, and the abatement.”
“You’re saying we’re automatically obligated as a city, or is the owner obligated?” Mayor Mike asked.
“Once we condemn it and the owner doesn’t follow through, then we’re obligated to follow through and do those things. That’s why we try to avoid the commercial structures simply because of the cost. We’re talking a small building and we’re over $20,000 just in the demo cost, and that was cheap. We’re looking at $45,000 for a small commercial structure when we did 31 residential structures for $208,000. It makes it tough for me to say that I don’t have any money in the budget for demolition, where am I going to pay out this money to get it done? So the commercial has been pushed to the back until we get some that are necessary.”
“So say that you bring a commercial property to us as substandard, the commission says we agree that it is substandard and is beyond repair and needs to be demolished, where does the owner’s responsibility on that end and ours begins?” Mayor Mike asked.
“Thirty days.”
“I believe in that ordinance it says that we ‘may’ do it.”
“Well once we do it, when we’ve condemned it, it’s ours to deal with. We may cite them, we may fine them as well, but at the end of the day, once we have considered it substandard and given that order, it’s my belief that we own it and to take care of it.”
“The recourse there is to file a lien on the property, but as we know, that’s not very tactful,” City Manager Shane Stokes said.
“There’s one other piece of that I found to be interesting and problematic in many ways because it says in that 3.08.011, there’s a 50% rule,” Mayor Mike continued. “If you have to repair more than 50% of the building, then it has to be demolished, or if the cost to repair it exceeds 50% of the value, then you have to demolish it. To me, that’s problematic because where do you decide what’s 50% of the building? What percentage of the windows or the roof?”
“It’s similar to the FEMA standards,” Cary said. “Your 50% is considered substantial damage which means that if more than half the cost or half the building is affected, then it’s substantial damage and it has to be remedied certain ways. Just like if it was in the flood plain and more than 50% can’t be rebuilt in the same place. It’s a similar thing. If half the building is caving in, but the front half is standing and the back half is missing, it’s pretty simple. The other part of that is, we generally are not bringing you the ones that are 48%. We’re bringing you the worst of the worst. We’re going to go with the properties that are mainly over 51% simply because those are the ones that get the complaints. Those are the ones that are the eye sores. Those are the ones people are going into. Those are the ones that have caught fire.”
“Then on the 50% cost, it says if the cost of repairs exceeds 50% of the value of the building, it doesn’t say value as is or value on the tax roll, post-repair value, and even the state property code is vague,” Mayor Mike said. “It doesn’t say how you determine that value, and I would say that I can’t imagine a case where that wouldn’t be true because if the value is already so low, it’s going to exceed 50%.”
“When we would be using this portion of that code would be a natural disaster or something of that nature. When Perryton had the tornado and you go in and evaluate these properties that had been affected, then you bring it to the substandard commission for that, you would use that portion of the code. What we’re doing on a daily basis right now in moving forward is we’re bringing you the worst of the worst to avoid being in this situation.”
“One other thing I wanted to talk about is there’s some power that we have in this 3.08 that I don’t know has ever been used and I’ve wondered about that,” Mayor Mike said. “If the building standards commission issues and order and the owner doesn’t comply, the language in this says that there are fines that can be applied. They’re not liens on a property, they actually are misdemeanor fines. Have we ever done that?”
“Not on the ones we’ve been bringing, no. We do that on a regular basis on properties that haven’t come here. We’ve been writing citations for numerous different violations, but most of them that come here are people who won’t pay the fines or are not alive anymore. That’s why we haven’t used that.”
“Those misdemeanor fines are significant. Say we give a 30-day or 60-day order to do repairs, the owners refuse, then those fines can apply up to $1,000 a day,” Mayor Mike said. “I don’t think we’ve ever pulled the trigger on that, but it’s for people who can repair and can make it standard again, but won’t, we have some leverage and should maybe think about using that.”
“Why are we having this discussion?” Commissioner Brian Doughty asked. “Are there commercial properties we’re considering in the future?”
“We don’t have a list or anything like that,” Mayor Mike said. “We’re just having a discussion. My motivation for wanting to talk about this is I don’t think that we need to take a position that everything needs to be demolished. We should repair first if possible, and we should not assume that the obligation is going to be on the city. You can go against the lien holder who has a lien on the property, the owner of the property-there are plenty of ways to get people to take care of their stuff. And it’s not always an obligation of the city.”
“But you have to consider it is just for budget purposes,” City Attorney Bryan Guymon said. “You have to have the money there because if they don’t do it, you have to pay. Ultimately we have to take care of it. Until you get to the point where you’ve handled all the properties that need it, then I think we can have more of a conversation on remodeling and repairing. But there’s still plenty in the queue that need to be handled. To the credit of the city, they’ve made some significant progress in that.”
“And to the EDC as well,” Shane added. “A lot of that funding has come through them, and would not have been part of the regular budget.”
“And what you don’t see is the daily work of working with these individuals to get these improved,” Cary said. “We don’t bring them to you when we’re working with them. We bring them to you when they have stopped working with us.”
“I just feel like imposing fines on people that don’t take care of it won’t do anything because obviously they don’t care,” Commissioner Wendi Horst said. “We can try, but nobody is going to pay it.”
“It’s a tool in the toolbox that I think would be very rarely used,” Bryan Guymon said. “It’s there and in the right circumstances we could use it, but the ones you are seeing so far aren’t the right cirumstance. You can’t kick someone who is already down. I mean this was grandma’s house and grandma passed away and there’s 14 grandkids and no one cares about the house. There’s no one to find anyway.”
“I think on residential we’re doing great, I’m talking about commercial properties,” Mayor Mike said. “I can name several where there’s a company behind it that has assets, a lien holder on a substandard structure-there’s people who can afford to fix it up and they just don’t. They abuse Pampa and they abuse all of us by leaving it like that. I’m not talking about grandma’s house. I’m talking about stuff there along the highways. Does every commercial structure have to have an asbestos assessment?”
“Every public structure has to have an asbestos assessment and abatement before it can be remodeled, demolished, or anything of that nature,” Cary said.
“So by public, you mean a business that has opened to the public?” Mayor Mike asked.
“A business that has opened to the public or has been a church, school building, government building, any public building. And they’re still being build with asbestos materials.”
With no further discussion, the commission moved onto the rest of the agenda, including approving the minutes of the September 28, 2026 regular commission meeting and excusing Mayor Mike from that meeting, which both were approved.
Next was to consider adopting on second and final reading Ordinance No. 1851, amending fees for water service, which was approved.
Next was to consider adopting on second and final reading Ordinance No. 1852, amending Code Enforcement fees, which was approved.
Next was to consider approving on first reading Ordinance No. 1853, prohibiting sales of Kratom products within city limits, to which Mayor Mike proposed to the commission not to make a vote on that and to save it for a later date until more information was provided. The commission agreed.
Next was to consider approving Resolution No. R26-010, denying Southwestern Public Service Company’s request for approval of amendments to its proposed Large General Service Transmission Tariff, to which Shane addressed the commission.
“This is one of three cases that Xcel has going on right now. This one is the large load tariff. They notified the cities, which by the way we have regulatory authority over them through the public utility regulatory act, so they must notify the cities of intent to file this case. The company failed to do that. They sent out an email on the 25th. I think they must believe that since they are not changing any rates, this is not an actual rate case. Our attorney believes that it is and they should have let us know with a letter of intent. That would have bought 30 extra days for us to do due diligence and study the case, but they did not do that. Typically we suspend one of these cases, and when you suspend these cases, it gives both sides 135 days to do due diligence. What action we are recommending here on this is to deny it and that will immediately send it back to the PUC to be heard and that will open it up to both sides to give testimony. The PUC has been acting very quickly on these cases with anything having to do with generation or new load, so the fear is if we don’t take action to deny it, then it might get to the PUC before it can even really be looked at. Just looking at it on the surface, it’s a good thing nobody is denying the fact that we need a new tariff for large loads. If a data center comes in here and says, ‘I need 250 megawatts or a gigawatt,’ they need to be on the hook for those payments. The Axom group is not comfortable yet that there are enough safeguards in there to protect the customers if someone came in and needed that much power and SPS spent a couple of million dollars getting it to them and then they decided they weren’t going to do the project or they went bankrupt. There’s not enough safeguards in there to protect the native customers from that suspended costs. So it needs a little work, and I have no doubt that we’ll come to a settlement on that pretty quickly, but Axom group is recommending the cities deny this and it will get kicked back to PUC. What will happen is SPS will appeal the denial from the cities and that will open up the PUC for both sides to give testimony on the case. This is one of three, we also have to have the fire mitigation plan and also their new power generation case that’s going on as well. What used to be one case every three or four years has now three or four cases every year it seems like. But in short, Axom is recommending we deny this and the other cities will do the same and we’ll attempt to settle it in Austin.”
“Have the other cities already done so?” Brian Doughty asked.
“They will be doing so this month before October 30.”
With no further discussion, the commission approved the resolution.
Next was to consider, discuss, and take appropriate action on Resolution R26-011, entering into an interlocal agreement with Panhandle Regional Planning Commission for application and grant administration if funded for TXCDBG Community Development Fund 20272028 cycle, to which Public Works Director Gary Turley addressed the commission.
“So PRPC helps us a lot with filling out applications for these grants. This one will either be another water main replacement or possibly a sewer main replacement. This is the first step to do the interlocal agreement with them, and then before November 19, we’ll come back with another resolution to apply. So this is the agreement for them to help us and then we’ll have another resolution to apply. In the meantime, we will figure out where to go with this grant. I believe on this one our match is 120 and their funding is 700+.”
With no further discussion, the resolution was approved.
Next was to consider approving two-year animal service agreements with the following cities: Clarendon, Groom, Howardwick, Lefors, McLean, Memphis, Miami, and Skellytown, to which Animal Control Director Neil Gardner addressed the commission.
“This is basically the new contracts where we raised the prices on some of what we charge for the housing where they stay per night. The state requires that we hold them for 10 days to watch them for rabies and stuff like that. We were so under on the pricing, so what we did is we branched out to Borger and a few others to see what their prices are, and that’s where we set them. Most of the contracts that we currently have, they are at the low standard, so this is us trying to cover our cost basically.”
“Will that actually cover our full cost on it?” Wendi asked.
“The biggest thing that I see is the euthanization cost. It was really low, but now that we got it up, I think that we’ll be okay. It takes two employees plus the cost of the drug, so I think now it will be covered pretty good. I think that our overnight stays went from $10 to $35 from what it was. By the time our staff goes in there multiple times a day especially for the bite dogs, we are required by state to check on them every hour, even on our stray dogs we get, there’s costs on that that we hardly ever get reimbursed for. So I think the raise that we did on everything will really help cover our costs than what we were. We just implemented it and we had just one that flat out didn’t have any money to pay the fines, but thankfully we got the dog adopted. Even though we didn’t get the money on it, we got the dog adopted out.”
“I see where Pampa has such a huge problem with housing. I’ve personally made calls to where they told me that they had nowhere to put it, so with these agreements, does that take down on our ability to house what we have here?” Wendi asked.
“Typically what we see with these agreements is the dog bite, quarantine for rabies, rabies testing, and euthanasia,” Shane said. “None of those take a kennel for a long time, I think it’s only for ten days, and then if it’s sent off, which is somehting else we changed because I think it used to be $5 for shipping, but you can’t ship anything for $5 now. And if it costs us more than the $35 which is in the agreement now, we can tack those fees on there as well. For years we were having to pay and compensate for these other cities for what they were needing us to do. It’s not really something that takes up a whole lot of our kennels, but it’s a service to those other cities that they wouldn’t have otherwise.”
With no further discussion, the agreements were approved.
Next was to approve all items listed in the consent agenda, which consisted of rewarding bids for delinquent tax properties, to which Mayor Mike addressed the commission with Cary up to answer questions.
“My point on these is this in light of our previous discussion, with Texas Communities Group, this list is not part of that, correct?”
“Correct. There was a miscommunication between us and the tax office. They had put some out for bid at the same time as Texas Communites Group was putting theirs out as well. So some of those have the signs in the yard and it all got referred to the tax office. These five ran through the data base and received bids when it was put on the website, so they went ahead and did that. We have about five more that should be coming in the next meeting that Texas Communities Group did at the same time.”
“So on our new deal, when they go to the sheriff’s sale and no one is willing to pay the back taxes and all the fees associated, then it becomes struck off and we go in demolish or clean up, and then it will be listed for sale, is that right?”
“Some of them, yes, if that is what will make them the most valuable. And what we’ll do, like with these five, the funds will get distributed prior to the interlocal agreements. The ones that we will bring next time we will receive the funds as stated in the agreements and then we will start our fund for the process of demolishing once they go to the sheriff’s sale.”
The commission then went through each item on the consent agenda, with the commissioners voting to approve and Mayor Mike voting no on each one.
The commission then went into an executive session and upon returning, with no further items on the agenda, adjourned the meeting.
