Presentation regarding Port Arthur Community Survey
City Council Chamber
Transcript Date: May 19th/2026
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Then when we get to it. All right. At this time, we have a presentation. At this will be a presentation by Gloria Sanchez, Christopher Seller and Mark Chambers regarding Port Arthur community survey.
Gloria Sanchez: Good morning everybody. My name is Gloria Sanchez. I live in six, six, two five Jade Avenue and. Correct. We’re here to do a presentation. Christopher.
Dr. Chris Sellers: I’m Chris Sellers. Good morning. Mayor. Yeah, we are talking. Good morning. Good morning. Mayor. Council members. Other other members of the days. I Guess. Really appreciative that you’ve given us some time to talk about our work here in Port Arthur, our community based research, and especially this survey that we conducted last summer. I, I teach at Stony Brook University in New York, but I was born in Texas. And I’m also I’m a son of Exxon. My granddad worked for the company for his entire life. And it put my dad through school and all that. So I’ve been visiting here in Port Arthur since since really since 2010. Talking to people, doing research, digging out the History. I’m an historian by trade and, and a historian of cities and so on. And let’s see. This, this is this is who’s presenting today. I hope I can do this quick. There we go. So all of these folks are, are more or less part of our team. And so Gloria the surveyor, Tiana Bruno is a is here with us and we’ll speak a little bit. She’s in the geography department at the University of California at Berkeley Hilton. Kelley is is known to many. Most of you, I understand, is the head of the community in power and development association here in Port Arthur. Mark Chambers is listening online but couldn’t make it. He has some health issues with a family member, so he didn’t travel here. I’m gonna be talking today about about our survey. And this gives gives you a sense of the team that was involved. So Mark and Hilton and some sociologists at Stony Brook, as well as myself. The surveyors, the four surveyors are all Port Arthur residents. You can see their names there. And we also had some financial support from Stony Brook University, a couple of sources, the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The survey asked residents what they think about the city, where they live. We talked, we looked at or listened to their thoughts on homes and neighborhoods and sense of community, as well as the jobs and local industries here. How we conducted it. We did it last summer and the the we did some recruitment of our surveyors first, and they were trained by our Stony Brook sociologist. Then they drew on all their contacts within the city to conduct the survey. All were Port Arthur residents, all the people surveyed and. The survey consisted of about 20 minutes of answering questions about living in Port Arthur. The benefits and burdens is how we frame those questions. So the survey began on the June Juneteenth celebration and the flag raising last year, and we. We proceeded to conduct a survey over the next week and a half or so. The people in the survey, we. We surpassed our target set by our sociologists. Given the size of the city and the statistical considerations, there was. 122 We got to. 155. You can see here the. How the survey sample compares with the. The demographics of Port Arthur. According to the community survey American community survey, we had somewhat more black or African American participants, a bit less Latino participants, and also a bit less white and Asian participants, but more multiracial folks than register in the. In the Port Arthur America community survey. So into the questions here. Our questions first. The first one centered on the sense of community here. And so to get at that, we we tapped people’s sense of their allegiance to Port Arthur with this question. Have you considered moving away? And we had 51%. I know there’s a lot of talk about, Oh, all the people are leaving, but actually we found a pretty robust group of folks, 51% had not considered moving away, and 15% once or twice they thought about it, but just about 30, 33% of folks had had seriously considered at one moment or another moving away. So we thought that was a pretty robust statement about people’s commitment to the city. And our next question opened up the issue of why we asked an open ended question about the benefits that people saw from living in Port Arthur. And here are our results. A great deal of folks 50%. And this was an open ended question. So we didn’t sort of pre pre fabricate and just have people check boxes. People volunteered phrases at least three about what they liked about Port Arthur. Social ties and community are number one, 50% of the comments of the 406 given responses, services and amenities also come up next at 13%. And then jobs and economy were a third place at 12%, along with cost of living. And there were some some comments about environment and location and so on as well. Just to break this down within the social ties and community, a lot of people talked about their personal connections with people in the community. So family, family friendly, close to friends and so on. Another group also mentioned community itself and the sense of community and then seeming like a small town that that was, that was the language that a lot of people used to in terms of the services and amenities that people mentioned, schools, educational opportunities, the proximity to stores and resources, the ease of getting around food and restaurants and religious communities, and then jobs. We had a significant number of folks talking about the opportunities here for jobs. And it’s interesting that just one person actually mentioned the refineries. So we’re talking about jobs more broadly than that. And then also low cost and affordability were big issues here. And housing also was mentioned by some. And then finally, other things mentioned were the city’s location on the water and the Gulf, its outdoor opportunities, like for fishing waterways and then its culture and its History. And I think this is a good moment to hear a little bit about Tiana Bruno’s research and online resources, about Port Arthur High.
Dr. Tiana Bruno: Good morning. Thank you, everyone for this minute to share a bit about my work. My name is professor Tiana Bruno and I am a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. But I’m also a daughter of Port Arthur. My mom and dad were both born and raised here in Port Arthur and my dad on the west side. My mom is a Village, so I’ve been around Port Arthur all of my life and continue to be obviously around Port Arthur, and I’ve been doing research on Port Arthur for about a decade, and it’s these kinship connections that brought me to my current research that blends geography, black studies, and environmental studies to explain connections to community, connections, to place home, natural and the natural landscapes of Port Arthur. I am working on a book. Yeah, it’s up there working on a book project that looks at, within this context of economic hardship and the sort of complexities of living beneath the largest refinery in north America, among other refineries. Why do people stay? Why do people stay in Port Arthur? It explores notions of air properties or the homestead, these sort of passed down properties that we have across Port Arthur. Cultural and community resilience and balances, community memories and connections to place and waterways and lands of Port Arthur with the very real reality of economic sort of complexities and environmental and climate harms. We think of the flooding and hurricanes, of course. And so paired with this book project is a story map that centers on a project called spaces where there were places which mr. John sears Jr, somewhere around here began years ago. And this is shaped into a multimedia project that focuses on the History of the west side of Port Arthur, the heritage, memory and community ethic that built a self-sufficient community during segregation and beyond is disappearing. West side today shows a lot of spaces where there were places, very dear places, a community that took care of itself, took care of each other. So I’ve been told. So it’s more of a it’s more than just simple nostalgia that this project is about. Many folks share that they would like to see this ethic of community care rebuilt in Port Arthur for a better future. So through Oral histories, community archives, short film and artwork. This project maintains that this memory maintains this memory with the aim of supporting community pride, resilience, and a care for the future of Port Arthur. I only have a minute or so, so I will be sharing more about this, much more about this work. During the Juneteenth flag raising, which is on June 4TH at the County Courthouse. And thank you so much.
Dr. Chris Sellers: I also I also wanted to make you aware of another resource on Port Arthur’s History that a team of us had developed, and out of which some of the survey questions that will go get into now come from this is on oil’s History and impacts in Port Arthur. And we have a whole sort of set of of explorations of Port Arthur History, photos, resources, narrative, lots of, lots of environmental information as well. And you can see the team that worked on this, this has been we’ve worked on this over the last 4 or 5 years. And so it’s quite the resource. I hope that people will find this and use it. We also have. I wanted to make you aware of this event tomorrow where both Tiana and I are going to be unpacking some more of our digging into Port Arthur’s History, as well as talking about the survey. And this is over at the Texas artist’s museum, 530 to 730. Please come, all of you. You’re welcome. And also a light dinner will be served.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Okay,
Dr. Chris Sellers: So now on to the survey. The rest of the survey itself, if I can. Let’s see what’s going on here. There we go. Okay, so building on our look at the History of the oil and petrochemical industry in Port Arthur and its community relationships, this some of our next questions ask people about the benefits versus the burdens of this this industry that’s been so central to Port Arthur’s History. And so you can see here, the response is we offered people a chance to say how beneficial each of these features of the industry was in contributing to the community. So we have providing jobs, aiding in spending power for local business and investing in training programs. And you can see that this looks pretty good, especially the two on the left in terms of largely and extremely. And, you know, to interpret this and most of these graphs, you need to look at this sidebar with with what the colors mean. Not at all is red. Little and somewhat are shades of blue. And then the more positive, largely and extremely beneficial are the green. And here you can see it looks like salaries and wages, especially that add to spending power are High. But you have to take that with with a combining that with the other two. And that’s 49% saying largely and extremely. And actually if you put the red along with the blue, you get 51%. So it’s really kind of a mixed bag here on these, these the way that people evaluate the benefits, these three benefits from the industry. And then this is a little less positive on investing in the downtown, paying taxes and other financing of the city government, and then donating to charities. So that’s a little bit less green, a little bit more blue, especially. What about the past versus present? What have been the trends? And here the trends are pretty remarkable. I think, in about the declining benefits that people have perceived in these contributions of the industry to the city. So providing jobs, you can see that the biggest share is much less now or somewhat less now. Same with the spending power and the same with investing in the public sphere, in the public, in downtown and other public spaces. Okay. And then this one too, present versus past. You’ll also see assessments of decline or stability in these benefits that people see from this industry. Now, this, this slide really boils down, I think, people’s attitudes that we heard from Port Arthur residents about this, this industry and its contributions to the local community. And you can see the High one here. The red and pink is poorly or not so well that the oil, gas and petrochemical industry are currently addressing the needs of the community. So this is this is a little bit of a cry for more for more giving back, how would you rate and in terms of the environmental aspects of this worse, we ask about burdens. And so we ask about things that are associated with the environment, such as air pollution and and here, not so surprisingly, the biggest cheer rate, the air quality here is poor are not very good. And those rating at very good or excellent are actually living out from the refineries. We found out. Where does it come from? It comes from local oil, petrochemical and other industrial plants. Great majority of people say much or most all of it. And then how concerned are residents about the harmful effects of of this industry, this local industry on their own and their family’s health? Very concerned. You can see extremely concerned or very concerned are where the bulk of people come down. And we’re talking air pollution, concerned about that, but also transportation of potentially dangerous materials and accidents from such as explosions or spills from the local industry. Of course, this is back last summer before the big Motiva explosion in March. So wow, what would they say now? Oh, Valero. Oh Oh that was Valero. Sorry. Yeah. March 23RD. Yeah. Valero. Sorry. And what about what about home values. And most people assess who are homeowners assess that this is the presence of this industry has not been good for home values at least theirs extremely influential in lowering or influential in lowering is the big share of homeowners in our sample. What about extreme weather? And we wanted to ask this in part because of the sort of climate change connection, just to see what people were thinking. And it seems pretty substantial that everybody assesses hurricanes, flooding and heat waves as getting worse, getting more extreme. That’s their lived experience, whether whether or not climate change has come to Port Arthur, their decision is Yes. And and, you know, we hear a lot about climate denialism, but that’s not happening in our sample for the most part. And people also link it to fossil fuel burning. Great majority make that connection. We didn’t ask about whether what they thought about the plants here themselves that make the fossil fuels, but I think a lot of them are connecting those dots. So finally, what about this is we this was a very important question that we wanted to get to the priorities that people have about how, how the industry could give back more, given the sense that it’s not contributing enough. And so we asked, we got these these possible ways of benefiting from the industry by talking with people beforehand, also by looking at what the industry has been giving, and it has been giving substantial donations various ways. And so you can see that when given the opportunity, most of these people rated them High or highest priority. And just to just to take them, take them apart a little bit, the highest priority is more than 60% rated High or highest. We’re hiring of locals. And then training that would would actually lead to local jobs. Number three, more transparency about local pollution, especially we mentioned real time monitoring of air pollution at the fence lines of the companies that was also rated highly. And all of these are above 50%. That was actually 64% bolstering schools, 63% supporting school programs, and 63% also for fortifying protections against the flooding that people see as getting worse and then recreatis in neighborhoods that lack them with. And finally, let’s see. And next in the list, 58% was were High or High priorities for increasing the tax in other contributions from the companies and then investing more in Port Arthur’s downtown, as well as fair price buyouts of homes near the refining and petrochemical plants. So I thought. So that’s our that’s the basic results of our survey, I think you see here, just to sum up an appreciation of an allegiance to the community of Port Arthur. But residents have have attitudes, have mixed attitudes toward the biggest industries in their in their midst, ranging from mixed actually to quite negative on several fronts, especially whether with regard to the environmental dangers. So there’s a strong sense that companies also need to step up and do more to address local community needs. And now let Hilton Hilton will say a few words to wrap us up here.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: I think let me say we have a total of 20 minutes for the presentation. So let me see if council we can go. That’s all I’m allowed to do. How much longer do we have?
Hilton Kelley: I won’t take long.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Oh, okay. Council members, y’all amenable? All right, let’s go.
Hilton Kelley: My name is Hilton. Can you guys hear me? Pretty good. Hilton. Kelley community development association, founded in 2000. I want to thank mr. Sellers, Stony Brook University. It’s always good to have a non-biased opinion with people coming into our community. And he had been after me for quite a while to work with cedar to do some research here, independent of our organization, just so you’ll note that. And I find his findings getting out into the community and actually talking to people and different ethnicities. This is his doing. Cedar has nothing to do with what’s being said, what’s not being said. So what they found was right in line with what we’ve always known when it comes to what we’re being exposed to, how much and who’s being exposed. And so I really appreciate Stony Brook University and mr. Sellers for being diligent in pulling my coat and saying, hey, we got to do this. Let me work with you. Let’s, let’s get some things done in Port Arthur, and here’s what we can add to the research and the things that you’ve been doing. As a matter of fact, I’m leaving in about five days, heading to Washington, D.C. to work with organization called Earthjustice. And what we’re doing is pushing to change policies that govern the type, types of chemicals and the amount of chemicals that can be dumped into the air by the oil and gas industries. Because everyone knows from D.C. all the way to our local government here in the state of Texas, that we are being disproportionately overburdened with certain toxins like benzene, ethylene oxide, sulfur dioxide, you name it. And this is why we have such High cancer rates here as we spoke about earlier. And so it’s important that we do everything we can with Port Arthur being our Texas being dubbed the energy country or energy state of, of, of, I mean, energy country of the world or whatnot. And so we have to do everything we can to protect ourselves, our families, and our friends and loved ones. And I have been fighting for 26 years to do just that, along with other folks that are here that may not be as visible as myself, but yet at the same time, we have to do everything we can to keep our citizens safe. And that is what we’re going to continue to do. So we are going to continue to bring information forward, like what mr. Sellers brought forward and the young lady that does a lot of research as well. And so we have a lot of great young minds coming into the city of Port Arthur, very interested in making Port Arthur the energy country that it is, and keep it there, but at the same time, keep it clean and safe and vital. And we want to help to upgrade some of our sectors that do not have the economic support that it should get, even though we’re sitting on a fence line $1 billion a year companies, and we think that it’s time for everybody to pay their fair share in taxes. So thank you guys for your time. Thank you guys for listening and giving us this opportunity for this presentation. Thank you. Okay.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: You’re welcome. Thank you all. And thank you guys for coming. We’re glad to have you. I have a couple of lights on, so I want to acknowledge those lights before you leave. Council member, council member. Doucet.
Council Member Harold Doucet: Yes, mr. Sellers, thank you for your presentation. You know, we we do a lot of hiring for consultants and people come in and help us. But it’s always good to have people who take their job. Like, you want to be a historian, you want to really do things because you want to do it from a perspective of people as opposed to monetary things. And when you present this information, you’re presenting this information not based on what you think or what you see. You’re basing it on actual response from people. And I watched for your questions that you asked. You know, they were not loaded. So the things you were asking for allow people to just feel good about saying what they want to say. And that’s from their perspective. But there’s two things I want to point out about you. Presentation. The first was job opportunities. And, and I know that this is a good survey because when you survey the people for job, I think you said one and no one really talked about working in the refineries. Okay. You see, I’ve been saying that, you know, people keep talking about we need to get jobs in refineries. I’ll keep our kids. They don’t want me to live around this, you know. But it’s information like this can get us to start servicing and helping and informing our citizens on things that can help them to feel better about the city. You know, when you start telling us what they talk about, that’s what we need to do. Our job is not to have our ideas what we think, see something in another city and say, Oh Yeah, they doing it over there, Boy. That’s right. We ought to have it in Port Arthur. No, it’s based on people here in Port Arthur and how they respond and what they want, the culture and all of that. You covered a lot in this survey, but everything you covered, if anyone has been paying attention in this city, they could see validation of what you were saying. We understand it. And I think this presentation ought to be something the council, at some point in time in the future, should take a serious look at. And also perhaps talking with you again, we need to try to do things in this city based on citizens, because what we do up here is supposed to be to serve them, not what we think. And we can’t do that if we’re going to use our opinions or we going to try to think for them, we have to know what they’re saying. That’s what you did. You got a sampling and that sample 155 is just like poland. It may not be the same in the end, but it’s going to be pretty close to what they’re saying. So I appreciate this. And this is very interesting. Very few presentation. I really got a lot out of, but I got a lot out of this one because it’s reaffirmed what I thought of the city and what I see of the city, and it’s coming from citizens. And somebody who’s taking it is taking it from that perspective. And you have to ask the right questions, and they have to be asked the right way, because if they’re loaded, you’re not going to get a good survey. And I pay particular attention to the questions that you ask. So once again, I really want to thank you for your presentation. Thank you.
Dr. Chris Sellers: I have a comment on that. It’s like we. Yes. Can you hear me?
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Yes we can.
Dr. Chris Sellers: Okay. Yeah. I mean, we really tried to make the questions balanced to, to allow for whatever, you know, diversity of opinion there, there might be. And so, you know, if we ask it about, we ask about benefits as well as burdens, we had the whole range of options that people could choose. And, you know, they chose as they saw fit. So I think we’ve gotten, we’ve, we’ve gotten a good sample of what, you know, you guys constituents, I guess you put it think here’s the other thing though, and this is in the storymap. And I want to make I have the the sheet here with all the QR codes for the both for a write up of the survey and for Tiana’s and our story map pieces that I’ll hand to you. But one of the things that we have in that story map on Port Arthur’s relationship with that with the industry, the oil and petrochemicals is figures, job numbers, and the peak proportion of the Port Arthur workforce in that industry was in 1960, when it was like 38%. Where is it now? It’s well below 8%. 8% Is the number of manufacturing jobs that Port Arthur residents have. And of course, just to share of that is in oil and petrochemicals. So so it’s really it has I mean, the people’s perceptions about change in the jobs from that particular industry, it really match up with the numbers. So okay.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Thank you. I’m acknowledging the lights. Councilmember Lewis had his light on first and then after councilmember Lewis. Councilmember,
Council Member Willie “Bae” Lewis: Yes, I appreciate your presentation. I spent 45 years in the in the oil industry. They got a long ways to go, but they’ve come a long ways. Okay. Because of the studies like what you do and, and different Hilton kelly’s organization addressing addressing issues that comes up. They have come a long ways, but they got a long ways to go. One of the things I would like for you to do is to on page on page eight, item one, I would like for you to share that information that the data page on page eight, item number one. Okay. It’s on a non consent agenda. Share, share your studies and information. If that, if this passes is got a consultant, we’re going to be dealing with going to be dealing with industrial district agreements tax abatement agreements and and you know you understand what a cep does. Okay. Okay. So I would like for you to share all of that data. If this passes with that consultant. Okay, okay. It will, it will, it will educate it. And, you know, it really would. And one of the things I’m not going to call the name of the community, but always keep in mind the prevailing winds 80% of the year is southwest in in this area, there’s a particular area, and I’m not going to call the name of the community on the south side of the home. It’s an affluent community on the south side of the homes, very little vegetation Corrosion on the on the the electrical equipment stuff on the north side, plants prevail because of that house. But that south side. This electrical equipment breaker boxes, they’re corroded and very few plants survive. They’ll they’ll grow, but they’re stunted. You know, like I said, I’m not going to call the name of the community. Anybody want to want to know? I’ll let you know. Okay. Okay.
Dr. Chris Sellers: Yeah. Thanks. That’s okay. You wonder why people are worried about their health. Well, when they see that kind of thing. Okay, councilmember
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Frank, you have your light on.
Council Member Donald Frank: I have a question, and I want to direct it to mr. Kelley, if I might, because I was concerned about the you know, we’re always concerned about the environment and about what refineries are emitting into the air. And we just recently had a situation in the city. Has any information been released per your knowledge of what what was released into the air, into our community?
Hilton Kelley: Yeah. Well, there’s been several reports done as to what was released into the air and for how long. We know that we have been exposed to disproportionate amounts of benzene. Most certainly, sulfur dioxide is always one of the main catalysts that’s released into the environment. Whenever you have any type of environmental incident, such as an explosion or major fire, ethylene oxide was emitted. As a matter of fact, Channel 12 and Channel six did an extensive report on exactly what was released into the environment and for how much at one given time. So, and we know for certain that it went on for about ten days. And there was a just uncontrollable amount of toxins. And some of them were known carcinogens like benzene, ethylene oxide that was released into the environment. Unfortunately. And I think you could look back on those news reports and get that in writing exactly what was released from Channel 12 and Channel six. And also there’s been other reports done as well by academia that I can probably share with you later on. Thank you. Thank you so much. You’re welcome.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Thank you. City manager. His light is on.
City Manager Ronald Burton: Yes. When you when you look at the data that you have presented in here and you look at the strategic plan on on the city’s website, it very much mirrors a balance that the city, as a municipal entity, continues to take in community engagement in creating that policy document, which you’re referring to, that would serve as a catalyst or a participatory tool in advancing development and people’s participation in initiating development at the local level. I think councilman Doucet mentioned it, but it’s that element, that very essential element is already there in the comprehensive plan, in the city’s comprehensive plan, that it has adopted. That very essential element is already there in the downtown plan. That very essential element is already there in the city’s strategic plan and is reflected in the capital improvement projects that are being undertaken on an annual basis. If you go through the city’s budget Drainage, for example, the city has invested over $78 million over the last four years, and the data supports it because here it is. It has been brought up by the residents, not that the city is not doing anything about it. The city has paid attention to the concerns of its residents by putting its money where its mouth is, in collaboration with the cities, with the citizens. So that’s a plus for the city of Port Arthur and its residents. It is a plus, and that should be mentioned. That should be mentioned. It has not. If you look at the efforts that have been put forward right now by the city attorney’s office, you know, to ensure that our ideas are being upgraded to make sure that industry is much more responsive to the needs of the average citizen. It’s already taking place. You know, we have we do have a long way to go. Yes, we do, but we have understood the need for community engagement. And we have understood to listen to, to, to the concerns of our citizens and make it part of our policy documents that we are working to achieve on an annual basis. I just wanted to mention that
Mayor Thurman Bartie: I’m glad you did. Thank you, because I think we’ve forgotten that we are negotiating and have been since 2020, New contracts with oil refineries. They’re not on the same contracts they’ve been on before. So we’re getting ready. It’s ten years. So it’s I think it was 2019. So now we’re getting ready and prepared to. Yeah. But it Yeah, some more.
City Manager Ronald Burton: But it provides an opportunity for collaboration and coordination. If you look at the recreational master plan that the city has developed, not as an academic, as an academic exercise in fruition, you know, but with solid community participation from every segment of the community. Today, we are implementing it 70 something plus thousand dollars, $4 million for rosehill as we go along. So there is community input. The voices of the citizens are heard, and we are putting the resources where it’s needed. We have to we have come a long way, but we have more work to do.
Dr. Chris Sellers: Yeah, I really appreciate that. All right. Can you hear me?
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Oh we’re good. Yes, sir.
Dr. Chris Sellers: Okay. I really appreciate that. And I think we, we we we haven’t really our questions don’t really center on what the city is doing. More on what on people’s sense of the refineries and so on, as well as their general community. You know, there were some signs in the survey that I didn’t really talk about, about some disgruntlement with what the city is doing, that maybe the word has not gotten out about some of these things. And I did look at the the strategic plan and so on. And I, you know, and also we looked at the questions that I think there was a survey that you guys did earlier, and we made sure our questions didn’t duplicate yours. So this is another. But I hope, I hope our hope is that the answers that we’ve collected will really, you know, empower and inspire you guys to do more and to push it forward all these different projects. And,
Mayor Thurman Bartie: And we really appreciate the back and forth guys for our presentation. But council members are, you know, of course, we need to kind of move on in our agenda, but we appreciate you and glad you’re going to be at the museum so that tomorrow we could possibly stop by and get more information on and speak and look at your presentation again tomorrow at the museum of the Gulf Coast at 535 30 to 730
Dr. Chris Sellers: At the museum? Yes, sir. And there will be time for questions and so on and discussion. We’re taking that in. That’s going to be that’s what we’ll do.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: All right. Thank you. Have a great day. I’m sorry. Very quickly. Okay.
Council Member Donald Frank: If I might
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Go ahead
Council Member Donald Frank: Just very quickly. Thank you, Mayor, for allowing me to say this, but I really do believe that it is imperative and important that I say this as we’ve watched this on to today and as we’ve listened to the to the citizens of Port Arthur, one of the things that they said was, was that they felt as though. I want to thank you, miss Bruno as well, for coming coming back to Port Arthur. That’s what we need our young people and individuals to still love Port Arthur. But I want to say as well, from this particular standpoint, that the data shows us that citizens believe that industry needs to participate more in our city. And when we look at how industry handles and deals with other cities around us and in proportion to how they deal with Port Arthur, there’s a great disparity. And so one of the things that we understand is, is that we are having so many chemicals emitted on us. But when we look at what companies have done in removing money away from our school district, in, in not supporting our bulletin board in Port Arthur, at our Stadium, but other cities around us are having their bulletin boards filled with promotions and with advertisement. We are not being handled in the same manner and way. And so I want to say that for the record, that the data now shows it as well, that the citizens feel it, but that the data shows it as well. And something has to be done and it has to be addressed as well. Thank you so much.
Mayor Thurman Bartie: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sellers. Have a great day. We’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow. Okay. All right. This time we’re going to move to number three, petitions and communications. City manager staff reports, we have none. Employee recognition, we have none. Correspondence, we have none. Discussions, we have none.