The city of Tioga is giving a helping hand to Tioga ISD in the form of a 2015 Ford Explorer.
The vehicle and installed equipment will go to the district as a donation.
'It's just a great community service for the school,' Tioga Police Department Chief Curtis Macomb said. 'It helps out their development of their own police department and whatever we can do to be a part of them and help them, I just think it's a no-brainer.'
Kurt Hall, who was named mayor pro tem earlier in the meeting, abstained because he is a member of the TISD safety and security staff, with all of the other council members present voting to give the donation to the district.
Tioga Volunteer Fire Department Chief Richard Hartman shared the work the firefighters poured into preparing for the possible significant weather event Sunday that caused property damage and power outages throughout Tioga's neighbor to the north, Collinsville.
'We started preliminary preparations Friday evening as it began to look more and more probable,' Hartman said. 'Prep included full checks of trucks, tools and supplies.'
On Saturday, they repeated those steps and ran through possible scenarios that could happen if the weather predictions held true.
The department stayed in communication with each other and the community throughout Sunday and they connected with Grayson County Emergency Management as well as watching the National Weather Service information.
'When y'all hear our manhour numbers, we normally only include our on-scene times and training hours and don't include these prep hours and extra time for these kinds of events,' Hartman said.
Although only minor damage hit Tioga, the first responders were ready to respond to worse, and Hartman expressed his gratitude for the people who dedicated extra time to prepare for an emergency.
During his department update, Macomb asked that the council members encourage the school district as well as themselves to integrate certified storm shelters into school or other public buildings in the future.
'As most of you know, we don't have one of those here,' Macomb said. 'I did get phone calls last night, 'Can we come to the fire station? Can we come to City Hall?' The fire station wouldn't have done them any better than staying at home. We would have allowed them to come to City Hall, but the storm kind of [weakened around] us a little bit. We didn't see the need for it.'
He also said that the city's contract does not include citywide trapping and relocation of loose animals.
'In the past, we've decided not to do that because it is a significant charge,' Macomb added.
Also at the meeting, Hall was named mayor pro tem, Deborah Hale was retained again as the municipal judge and the council voted to stay with auditor Joseph Madden as well.
The council also annexed 10.76 acres at the northwest corner of Florence Street and Buck Creek Road.
