On Monday, April 27, the Pampa City Commissioners held their last meeting for this month, beginning with a public comment from Mr. Rooney.
“I would like to relay to you a few of the instance that I had with some city employees. I think the last week of March, I had a public works city employee come to my house with a grapple truck and he picked up a bunch of garbage that I had moved out of a storage facility, and he was polite, courteous, and respectful. On Easter Sunday, I got pulled over by the Pampa Police Department by Officer Cotton for a traffic violation, and they were polite, courteous, and respectful. On Easter Tuesday, I was at a residence where I was doing work with a backhoe and I encountered a City employee by the name of Alice who installed the water meter; polite, courteous, and respectful. On that same day I also encountered Code Enforcement. They pulled in the alley behind where I was and I had been there three weeks previous to that with the backhoe to install a sewer line. There’s a sewer line existing on the property, and they wanted to put PVC in which was fine. So I dug the ditch and we encountered two pieces of concrete which was the foundation from the old building that had been on that property. I was called back over a couple of weeks later where they said they were having a hard time getting through the concrete and they needed some help to dig it up, so I took the backhoe over there. Code Enforcement came into the alley just as I got done with it and I walked over to my pickup in the alley. The female in the passenger seat asked me what I was doing just dripping with contempt and I told her I was installing a sewer line. She asked if I was a licensed plumber and I told her no, and she said, ‘well you can’t do that in Pampa, you have to be a licensed plumber.’ She hands me a piece of folded paper and that was it. I open the paper and read it, and it’s a stop work order. Never once did any of those four that I encountered identified themselves, told me who they were, what they were there for, nothing. And they’re giving me a stop work order. I own the backhoe and I was on the job. I don’t think I was the proper person to do it if they were worried about plumbing. But I said fine, the work stops and we’re gone. So I was getting ready to walk away and I look over at the driver and he’s holding a phone up recording me. I said, ‘beautiful day, isn’t it?’ and nothing. There was somebody also in the backseat and nothing. Just totally disrespectful. So then I walk over to my truck and I call and say that I’ve been given a stop work order and I don’t really know what’s going on, but I need to get cleaned up and get picked up and out of here. So another pickup truck comes in the alley, an undercover police officer, and he comes and asking for my license. You’ve heard the term ‘seething with anger’, and his lip was quivering and I asked for what? Basically what happened was he is telling me that because I was plumbing without a license in Pampa, I was getting a citation. I wasn’t plumbing. I feel bad for the people that came to this city and bought that property who are trying to establish the residence. They’re new people to Pampa and this is the way they are being treated. I don’t think this is fair, I think the stop order should be revoked. They should be allowed to do work on their own plumbing as stated in the FAQs. They can do plumbing, electrical and heating as long as it’s not commercial or a rental property. No question was asked of me, it was on supposition and it was all orders. Nothing was ever asked. It was very disrespectful and I think that the work order should be revoked and the work should be allowed. The owners are doing the work themselves, it’s their own property and they’re allowed to do the work.”
Next on the agenda was to hold a public hearing regarding the property located at 313 N. Wells, a substandard structure. To speak about the property was Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Kennedy.
“On this particular property, it has been vacant for quite some time now. We’ve been keeping an eye on it, and there’s a lot of people going in and out of the house through the front and the back. There’s no electricity or water and it can’t be lived in. The floors are literally falling in as you walk into the house. Code Enforcement Officer Roberts went in with me and was one of the first ones I trained him on, and we had to back out of the house because there was no way to get all the way through it. There’s another back part we couldn’t get to because literally everything was creaking in there. There’s not much you can do with it, and we’ve reached out to the owner, but she’s in Oklahoma and we never got any information back, same with a certified letter. In the condition it’s in, someone could get hurt, and we recommend condemning this structure.”
With no further comment on the property, the hearing was closed and the commission approved a 30-day demolition order for the structure.
Next was to hold a public hearing regarding the property located at 510 N. Naida, a substandard structure.
“On this one, it’s grown up every year and we mow it down and put time into it. It’s gotten a lot more rough with people trying to go through the windows and stuff like that. I got over there last June and tried to make my way in the house because the roof is leaking and things like that. You couldn’t open any of the doors and the windows wouldn’t really open because the whole back side of the house has collapsed down on top of the structure. So I couldn’t get in the back and it was enough where I could look through the windows. We do have one of the owners of it that it was going to be willed to, and he’s here.”
Kasey Presson addressed the commission regarding the property.
“I can’t share the name of the person who owned it other than the last name. He was a leg of my family that I think we lost contact with about 25 years ago, so I was surprised when Jeff reached out to me about it ,and the house really is in bad shape. I asked my mom to see if she would reach out to that side of the family, but as far as I know, she hasn’t heard anything. I believe the house actually belonged to my great-grandmother for a period of time and it was passed down to family that we haven’t been in contact with for a very long time. ”
“We’ve sent out several certified letters trying to track down family members and Kasey was the only one,” Jeff said. “There’s not much we can do for this house, so Code Enforcement does recommend condemning this one before someone goes in there and gets hurt.”
“Kasey, you don’t want anything to do with it?” asked commissioner Brian Doughty.
“My curiosity was piqued until we went to take a look, so no, sir.”
With no further comment on the property, the hearing was closed and the commission approved a 30-day demolition order for the structure.
Next was to hold a public hearing regarding the property located at 900 South Sumner, a substandard structure.
“This is a house we’ve had our eyes on for about five years now, just seeing if they were going to do anything with it and occasionally it would get mowed. When you go into it, you can see straight through the roof and there’s light coming through everywhere. It’s in really bad condition. There’s not much to say about it and there’s nothing really left in there except a little bit of furniture that has deteriorated from the weather. It’s right there as you’re coming into Pampa so everyone coming through can see it, so it’s really just a blight and it’s about time we made a decision to take it down. We recommend taking it down because if someone goes into this one as well, either they’re going to start a fire or get hurt.”
With no further comment on the property, the hearing was closed and the commission approved a 30-day demolition order for the structure.
Next items were to consider the minutes of the March 23, 2026 regular commission meeting and consider approving the list of disbursements dated March 2026; both were approved.
Next was to consider approving on first reading Ordinance No. 1832, amending the revenues and appropriations for the support of the City of Pampa for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2025 and ending September 30, 2026, which was approved.
Next was to consider approving on first reading Ordinance No. 1833, removing real property from the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) of the City of Pampa.
“If you recall back in the last legislative session, Senate Bill 2038 was passed into law which allows property owners in a city’s ETJ the ability to petition to be removed from the ETJ,” City Manager Shane Stokes said. “Cities based on their size have different ETJs, and for ours it’s one mile. So any property owners or groups of property owners in the ETJ, 50% or more of those who agree to be removed, petition the city and we have to let them out. In fact if we take no action at all, by order of law after 45 days, they’re out of it anyway. So because this is our first one, we’ll bring it to you in this form every time, that way we can keep a good permanent record of who’s in and who’s out. There’s really no advantage to being removed from the ETJ as far as I can tell. They’re not taxed on city taxes in the ETJ, but they have the ability to petition. This particular piece of property is a very small parcel around where our fireworks stand sits, and I don’t know if the person is misunderstanding the fact that they may not be able to sell fireworks in our ETJ, which they can. So I don’t really know why they’re wanting out, but they’re asking and they’re the only owner of that property so they’re obviously 50% or more. So we pretty much have to let them out.”
“What is the purpose of an ETJ?” Commissioner Wendi Horst asked.
“ETJs were established really as cities were growing because you could annex from your ETJ,” Shane said. “If the city was growing and anyone who was inside of the ETJ, they could annex property a lot easier than if it wasn’t. The law changed through the years and annexation became virtually impossible to do that unless 100% of the property owners were volutarily annexing. So that used to be the advantage of the ETJ-you still got a spill over of city services such as our police and fire responding to the ETJ. Saying that, we’re obviously not going to ignore this person in the ETJ, but there’s not really any benefit of doing it, but we have to grant the request.”
With no further discussion, the item was approved.
Next was to consider authorizing the City Manager to accept the proposal from Intermountain Slurry Seal, Inc., in the amount of $181,719.53 for the 2026 Micro-Surfacing Project and to execute all necessary documents.
“As our yearly attempt to continually improve our city streets in Pampa, we’re going to try something a little different called micro-surfacing,” said City Engineer Luke Raber. “This is more of a finer, smaller layer of pretty much asphalt. It ranges from a quarter to a half inch thick and is tightly bonded. It will actually go through and fill in holes, but also cracks, so it’s almost like doing a combination of crack seal and a hole fillings. This will be from from Duncan and 25th all the way down 25th, and we will actually do two other locations hopefully-22nd to Hobart and over toward Williston, and then on Harvester by Sonic which was filled several years back and we just want to get it sealed back up. Borger is currently doing this-I talked to their public works director and they used the same company last year, and they have a good product and have had good results from it. This company has done work in Amarillo as well, and Borger is using them again this year for some of their streets. Hopefully if they can get a couple of more cities, this price will actually come down. A lot of that is their mobilization cost, so the more cities they get, the more we can bring that price down because they’re not going to just one city, but multiple. So hopefully we can see that price come down.”
“Looking at what we’ve done in the past, how does this price stack up?” Commissioner Doughty asked.
“Compared to the chip seal that we’ve done in recent years, this is slightly more than that. It’s about a fourth of the cost of doing a mill and fill, which is typically used for roads that are falling apart and you have to do more significant work. But it is more than a chip seal, however, we can do more crack sealing with this and fill in the alligator cracks. This isn’t a long-term solution, about 5-10 years, but this is kind of a trial-run for 25th Street, and if it works well, there’s going to be some other applications we can use without having to go as extensive as mill and fill, but not just as low as chip seal.”
“Have we budgeted for this?” Commissioner Horst asked.
“Yes, this is part of our current budget. We have three street projects budgeted-25th being one of them, 23rd and then some work on Kentucky at the bottom of the hill around the nursing home.”
With no further discussion, the item was approved.
Next on the agenda was to consider authorizing the City Manager to enter into a lease agreement with KS StateBank for the financing of one Elgin Broom Bear Street Sweeper.
“This covers pretty much all the big maintenance items,” said Public Works Director Gary Turley. “It will cover any mechanical failures, but it doesn’t cover the wear and tear on the brooms, so if the brooms start getting worn out, which we’ve already put a lot of hours on them, and we’re almost ready to replace the brooms. But it covers everything else.”
“This is a five-year lease agreement, so we would have about $85,000 annually for a payment, and a total payment at the end with a purchase option or we can exchange it for another one with another lease agreement,” Finance Director Theresa Daniels said. “This annual payment is already budgeted in our current budget. We are covering this with our vehicle replacement funds which is extending us longer to make that decision to purchase it or lease a new one.”
With no further discussion, the item was approved.
Next was to consider approving an Animal Services agreement with the City of Memphis.
“We were contacted by the Chief of Police there in Memphis because for about six months, they have not had anybody to perform euthanasia services for their local animal services,” Police Chief Brian Massey said. “In the process of getting that filled but having an immediate need, they have some dangerous dogs that have been deemed as such, but they can’t do anything because they don’t have anyone certified in that. So the initial thought behind this agreement was to get us to a place where we could offer that service here. We have similar agreements with the City of Clarendon, and the town of Howardwick I believe, and maybe a couple of others. So that’s what this agreement is-to be able to provide these services for these five dogs they have on hand. It would follow the same laws that our shelter here does. The Chief there in Memphis assured me they would do everything in their power to not put down dogs. It’s less than 2 percent of animals that come into their facility that end up being euthanized, which is very consistent with what our shelter here does. This agreement would be able to help in that and covers our cost for labor and the drugs to perform that service.”
“They will bring those dogs to us?” Commissioner Doughty asked.
“Correct, and they’ve even offered to take them back to their city afterwards.”
“Through this process, we’ve learned that what we’re charging these cities to do this is not even really covering our cost of service,” Shane said. “So all the other cities that were mentioned, we’re currently in a two-year contract with them which will end in February 2027. We went up to $35 per animal on this agreement and we anticipate going up for the rest of them to that amount when we get to renew those agreements which will cover it.”
“Are they going to bring one at a time or five at a time? I always see this places overrun with animals,” Commissioner Horst asked.
“Shelters all around the state are overrun unfortunately, but they would be bringing them here for that purpose and schedule it with Neil and his crew, so we wouldn’t be housing them.”
With no further discussion, the item was approved.
The commission then went into an Executive session, and upon returning with no further action or discussion to be had, the meeting was adjourned.
