Houston: Special City Council Meeting 10.12.2026

Call to order the special city council meeting of October 12th at 6 PM.

Clerk, uh, call roll call, please.

Council Member Johanson. Here.

Councilmember Courtney.

Here.

Councilmember Lewis. Here.

Councilmember Mitchell. Here. Councilmember Khan. Here.

Deputy Mayor Brazell. Here.

Mayor Kohl. Here. We have a quorum. Okay, um, make motion to approve the agenda. I'll second.

Oh, uh, yes. Yes, Father, thank you so much for today. Thank you for the people here that have stepped up to serve the city. And God, I just thank you for the election, for the people speaking out who they want to be here or remain here. I just pray that we would all just make the best decisions for our awesome city.

In Jesus' name, amen.

And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, now let's, uh, Take the vote on the agenda. Who seconded? I'm sorry, Jeff.

Motion's been made and seconded to approve the agenda. Council Member Khan?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye. Council Member Mitchell. Aye. Council Member Johansen. Aye.

Council Member Courtney.

Aye.

Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye.

Mayor Cole. Aye.

Motion carries unanimously. Okay, brings us down to public comments. Anyone in the public have a comment?

Seeing none, we will move down to new business.

You want to read the resolution? New business item number A, a resolution number 2624, a resolution of the Houston City Council accepting the certificate of canvas board results in certifying the October 6th, 2026 regular City of Houston election.

Okay, uh, I'll make a motion to approve Resolution Number 2624. A second.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, we'll take the vote.

Motion's been made and seconded to approve Resolution Number 26-24, a resolution of the Houston City Council accepting the certificate of canvas board results and certifying the October 6th, 2026 regular City of Houston election.

Councilmember Johansen. Aye.

Councilmember Khan.

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis. Aye. Councilmember Courtney.

Aye. Councilmember Mitchell. Aye. Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye.

Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, you're going to swear in the—. Yep.

Item 6B, swearing-in ceremony for newly elected council members.

I, Lisa Johansen, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Alaska, the laws of the city, and that I will honestly, faithfully, and impartially discharge my duties as council member to the best of my ability.

I, Jeff Brazel, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Alaska, the laws of this city, and that I will honestly, faithfully, and impartially discharge my duties as council member to the best of my ability.

Well, I'd like to congratulate both you guys for returning, and hopefully we will have as successful year coming here.

Don't you need our John Henry's? I'm getting John Henry's.

Jane Hunter in one case. Just keep moving along. Okay, um, brings us to the minutes of October 8th. I'll make a motion to accept the minutes of October 8th. Anyone want to— I'll second.

Okay, anyone have comments?

Hearing none, I will just say the reason we put this on tonight's agenda is so that we can submit these with the, um, Community Block Grant. They want to have that as part of the package. Otherwise, we would have just waited.

So if you You want to do a roll call?

Nope. Lisa, are you done? Lisa's looking over. Oh, there's just a couple spelling errors, names. Yeah, that's only issue I see.

So I'm good.

Okay, good. You? Yeah. Okay, motion's been made and seconded to approve the minutes of October 8th, 2026.

Councilmember Lewis. Aye.

Councilmember Courtney.

Aye.

Councilmember Mitchell. Aye.

Councilmember Johansen. Aye.

Councilmember Khan. Aye.

Deputy Mayor Brazell. Aye. Mayor Kohl. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, brings us to audience comments again. Anyone in the audience want to speak?

Okay, showed up, nobody wants to say anything.

Okay, uh, then, uh, how about the clerk? Do you have anything you want to say?

Um, special meeting next Monday.

6 PM. I'm sorry, my brain can't think of anything else right now, but we do have that for sure.

Um, and I think we're good till November. Then I will go to Council Member Johanson. I would just like to thank everybody who came out and voted. We had just about 5% of people who came out and voted, so I, I would like to thank those people who took the opportunity to make their voices heard. I appreciate the people who had the, the trust in me to sit up here for another 3 years.

Service to my community is very important to me, and representing my town is important to me. And I hope people realize that I always have an open door— excuse me— and I'm always happy to talk to people, um, whether we agree or not. I mean, that, that doesn't matter to me. I want to hear from people. I want to know what's going on.

So I'm just happy to be able to keep serving my community in another capacity. So thank you for that.

Okay, Councilmember Courtney.

Uh, I guess I don't have a whole lot to say, just congratulations.

To Councilmember Brazel and Johansen.

Um, happy birthday to Lisa.

And yeah, that's it. Okay, uh, how about Councilmember Lewis?

Congratulations to you both.

That's it. Okay, um, how about Council Member Khan?

Just want to say congratulations to you two both for having your seats again, um, and thanks to the people for coming out and voting. Um, it's good to see community involvement. Thank you. Okay, and Council Member Mitchell. Uh, yeah, congratulations Council Member Johanson, Council Member Raisel, Deputy Mayor Brazel, for another for a week, for a week until, until we figure out the next move.

Um, yeah, congratulations to both of you guys. Thank you so much for serving your community. I know that, you know, I've personally witnessed both of you guys serving the community outside of your capacity as council members, and so just thank you for your dedication, the amount of time that you guys spend to just do your best to make sure Houston stays, or actually gets better. I know you guys are working to make Houston a better place to live, not just stay safe, and just all the capacities that you guys serve. So thank you guys for stepping up.

I know it's a, it's, it's a bit of an undertaking. There's a lot of scrutiny from the public sometimes, but you guys are still happy to come back and take the lickings to do the best you can for the community. So that's very appreciated. Thank you to the city staff, for, uh, clerk, deputy clerk, for all the work that you guys did for the election. I know that's a lot of work putting that together, getting the information out, making that run smoothly.

Thank you to everyone that served in the election to run the election, but also to the canvas board and everyone that stepped in to help out with that, and to the community for, like I said last week, a quiet election season. That was very nice. They haven't always been that smooth in the past, and so I was thankful to see it go smoothly. And thank you to the council members, just the people that step up to serve, to help, to make good decisions, to further the community, to help this community grow in a healthy way. Because there's a lot that's being done to help this community grow, but do it in the right way.

For the infrastructure that we're putting in, the work that we're doing, it's all good stuff. So thank you everyone. Yeah, Deputy Mayor. Yeah, I'll keep it short because it's meeting season and we have a lot of these right now. But thanks to everybody that supported the election staff, all of the volunteers from the Canvas Board to the folks doing the counting to the observer.

I mean, it takes a lot of people and it was incredibly graceful this year. So, and thanks to everybody that came out and voted. I appreciate your confidence. And I'll continue to try to do my best.

Okay, and I'm just going to remind everyone that the 29th there will be the planning and zoning meeting, and we for sure will have the borough and, uh, Lounsbury there to present their 35% on King Arthur. Uh, that, uh, I mean, if anybody in the public's interested in what that design is We will have it posted this week, and then they will be going through it in great detail on the 29th. Um, and I will— just a reminder, I will not be here next Monday. Uh, so thank you, Deputy Mayor, for filling that meeting slot. And, um, And thank you both, you and Charlie, for, uh, I didn't have to think or worry about anything this election cycle.

That was a really nice thing. So, and thank you for the work on getting a form that is easy to read. I mean, I didn't— and color, I mean, I like color, so it's, uh, pretty easy for everybody to look at those and go, okay, this is what happened. So appreciate that. And that's it for me.

And I do want to congratulate you guys again. Running for election is always interesting, but I'm glad that the people do it. I mean, that's what makes our system work. So at that, we will adjourn at 6:17.