Megan Navarro
WIMBERLEY — As the Wimberley Valley and surrounding areas continue to face long-term water resource challenges, Wimberley City Council adopted a resolution at its Thursday, July 16, meeting that supports the county’s efforts in identifying and evaluating regional solutions.
This follows the cities of Wimberley and Woodcreek, along with Hays County, entering into a Collaborative Water and Wastewater Planning Efforts Interlocal Agreement (ILA) in May 2025. Additionally, at its July 7, 2026, meeting, the Hays County Commissioners Court authorized the Civil Division of the Criminal District Attorney's office at its July 7 meeting to negotiate a professional services agreement of no more than $50,000 with Accenture, related to the creation of an entity with representatives from the county and aforementioned cities.
“As everyone knows, we are fighting for water constantly and we don't have local authority and we always say we don't have local authority from a county perspective and we are waiting on the state legislature to do something,” said commissioner Morgan Hammer at the July 7 commissioners court meeting. “This is something that we can put into place that will help us. We are having tons of funds from the state level being allocated towards water … This would give us not only teeth, but would also allow us to accept funds and to help our water infrastructure and also if there was ever a time where a pipeline was run into Wimberley, it would give us some authority to be able to dictate what happens to that and how development is kind of controlled from there.”
According to Wimberley City Council member Rebecca Minnick, who sponsored the July 16 resolution to support Hays County working to evaluate creating an entity, this is the most concrete effort that has been proposed since the ILA was entered into last year.
“It’s already passed the county, so I thought that it made sense for us to go ahead and do a resolution for council because we haven’t been able to discuss this with you as a group,” she said.
The proposed scope of work — expected to be complete within 120 days — for the entity includes the following: stakeholder engagement; evaluation of governance options; identification of grant and funding opportunities; and development of recommendations for an entity that could support sustainable water supply planning, water resource protection and regional coordination, according to agenda documents.
This brings another “tool in our toolkit” to have a more robust water supply, plan for the future and give more weight as a single entity than it would be if the city of Wimberley tried to do it on its own, Minnick added.
“What this does is it gives a jurisdiction where we can apply for grants and right now, there is a water source grant that’s out there that we probably would be able to apply for right away and this is out of the state water fund,” Minnick said. “The issue becomes as a city, we can apply for that, but there are areas in the [extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ)] that maybe these water sources might be located and there’s really no jurisdiction to do that.”
This resolution does not create a new entity or obligate the city to participate in any future organization or financial commitment, so any future proposal on the formation of a regional entity or the city’s participation would require separate approval by council.
“Basically, it says that everybody is on board with this next step and when the next steps come, then we will have another formal agreement,” Minnick said, adding that they don’t know what the structure looks like until Accenture reports its findings.
Wimberley City Council unanimously approved the resolution.
Budget
In a workshop held prior to its regular meeting July 16, Wimberley City Council went over its fiscal year 2027 budget.
The key budget priorities, as listed by city administrator Tim Patek, include the following: maintaining core services; infrastructure and road maintenance; parks and recreation investments; technology and operation support; and financial sustainability.
According to Patek, the general fund budget, as it is currently proposed, is balanced, as the revenues and expenditures both total $2,147,000.
“The process is to always try to have a balanced budget on all of our budgets,” Patek said.
The major source of revenue in the general fund is from the tax revenue, according to Patek, with general sales and use at $1,575,000, mixed beverage at $95,000 and franchise at $310,000. Other sources of revenue include license and permit fees at $48,000 and service fees at $54,000, as well as interest revenues at $60,000 and miscellaneous at $5,000.
In the expenditures, personnel services — at $407,700 — and administration, totaling $793,800, remain the largest operating costs. Similar to last year, staff is looking at having a 3% salary increase for city employees, Patek said.
“We kind of have a norm with that. The two prior years before that, we gave a lump sum across the board and we tried to increase the gap from the lowest to the highest to this,” the city administrator explained. “So, my first year here, we gave a $5,000 increase to all employees and the second year, we gave a $4,000 increase to decrease that gap and then, after that, I talked with council and staff that we were looking at giving a percentage after that and they were all good with that.”
Patek explained that some employees who were given the $5,000 increase, they got a 10-12% increase one year and then, it was almost the same next year.
Council member Anne Ulfelder said that she would like to see the pay increase for this year be at least 5%.
In response, Patek said that it would be up to council on what it would like for staff to look at when going over the numbers. He added that the city also increased the retirement contribution from 5% to 6%, so that “takes a little bit of a hit, as well.”
Ulfelder asked Patek to provide the impact for a pay increase of 4% and 5%.
Other components of the budget include Parks and Recreation, Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT), Wastewater and Interest and Sinking funds.
Similar to that of the general fund, Parks and Recreation has a proposed budget of $1,232,000 in revenue and expenditures — the latter of which includes the community center, which has been moved into this fund from last year, Patek said.
The other three funds are also balanced at:
• HOT: Revenue and expenditures at $725,000
• Wastewater: Revenue and expenditures at $436,000
• Interest and Sinking: Revenue and expenditures at $367,000
The next budget workshop will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6, with the ultimate adoption, fee schedule and proposed goals adoption slated for Sept. 17.
To listen to the full meeting recordings, visit www.wimberleytx.portal.civicclerk.com.
