Normally, when someone buys a house, they will pick the home they want and then try to secure a loan to obtain the money to pay for the home. Sometimes they will get pre-clearance for a loan before they buy a house. But I’ve never heard of a case in which someone borrows $300,000 or so from a loan company and then goes out in search of a house to buy.
The same is true of municipalities when it comes to capital projects, usually defined as the construction or the major repair of one or more things that will last at least 20 years. Municipalities will undertake all the required studies — land costs, engineering, etc — to determine as closely as possible the cost of the project, and then they will ask voters for permission to take out a loan, in the form of bonds they sell and then repay with interest, to cover the cost of the projects. That way, after the bonds are sold, the city can immediately ask for companies to bid on the construction projects and get right to work on them without much delay. The reason voters need to give permission for the sale of bonds is because they are repaid by taxes the city collects and if the taxes being collected at the time the bonds are issued aren’t enough to cover their costs, the city must collect more money, usually by increasing property tax rates.
From what I’m piecing together, that’s not the way it’s been done around here. In May 2013 Kyle voters gave the city their approval to borrow $36 million to pay for road repairs, expansions and/or extensions of five roadways: Bunton Creek Road, North Burleson Street, Goforth Road, Lehman Road and Marketplace Avenue. That last project — extending Marketplace from its current terminus southward to Burleson — wasn’t part of the original proposition and, from what I’ve learned, a number of influential individuals didn’t want it to be part of the original proposition. However, of the four other projects, all but Burleson were located on the east side of Interstate 35 and city officials wanted more voter participation in the bond election from the voter-rich east side. So they added the Marketplace extension, a project extremely popular with those who live in the Burleson Road/Center Street area of town who now, in order to shop at the H-E-B which, for all practical purposes, is the only grocery story in town and is located north of where they live, must drive south before they can eventually head north to get to that store (as well, of course, to the Target right across the street from the H-E-B). I said this project was "extremely popular" and Mayor Todd Webster supports this. He told me last night he receives, by a whopping 4-1 margin, more people demanding the Marketplace extension be completed than the other four projects combined.
I’ll get back on the subject of Marketplace in a second, but it’s important to note that when the city asked voters to approve this bond package, virtually nothing had been done to determine exactly how much these projects would actually cost. Now voters are getting a little peeved because it’s more than a year and a half since they approved these bonds and they still can’t see with their own eyes any actual work starting on any of these road projects. The reason they aren’t seeing any is because all the engineering, to cite just one example, that should have been completed before the bond proposal was sent to the voters, wasn’t even sent out for bids until after the proposal passed.
As far as the Marketplace Project is concerned, there was still that small handful of folks who, for reasons other than NIMBY seem difficult to decipher, don’t want it to happen. But after the bond proposal passed, stopping the project outright would be breaking the law and result in sharing a room with Big Ugly Mike in some minimum security detention unit. So they did the next best thing: they managed to put so many unrealistic obstacles in the path of its construction that it amounted to the same thing.
That was the situation facing Mayor Webster and the current city council, four of whom assumed their seats a year after the passage of the bonds. Obviously, a new sheriff was needed so the council summoned Wyatt … I’m sorry, James … Earp, who, at the time, was the assistant city manager and during the process became the city’s acting city manager. He was assigned to be city’s designated negotiator whose assignment was to somehow, someway find a way around these obstacles. (To give you some idea of how ludicrous some of these barriers were, one required that in order for the road to go forward, the landowners along the route had to surrender their land for the right-of-way without receiving any compensation — not one red cent — for the land the city needed to build the extension. Another one gave the developer the right to build the road and then be repaid by the city; anyone who agreed to a deal like that would also wind up sharing a room with Big Ugly Mike.)
Last night, Earp, in his last appearance as the acting city manager, briefed the city council on the status of the negotiations and, to the astonishment of many and the chagrin of a few, let it be known that he achieved something that possibly his more famous namesake never could — a deal that is close to being finalized with all parties directly involved to complete the extension. Even so, there is still a lot of misinformation about the process. The developer paid (he claims close to $270,000) for a lot of the engineering that is required before construction can begin. The city could initiate its own engineering studies from scratch, but Earp thought it would be wiser simply to purchase the studies that have already been completed and agreed to reimburse the developer for any and all payments he made for those studies up to $270,000. However, some reported that what was happening is that the city is paying $270,000 for buying land which it is supposed to be getting for free.
Item No. 14 on last night’s council agenda read: "Discuss and take possible action to execute an agreement by and between the city and Plum Creek Developers, L.L.C., for the extension of Marketplace Avenue." As noted above, the item was discussed but no action was taken, even though a tentative agreement is in place, because of some technical changes and "typographical errors" that need to be fixed before the agreement is signed. One of those "technical changes" concerns exactly where Marketplace will intersect with Burleson — close to Spring Branch or should Marketplace take a sharp dogleg to the left and intersect with Burlerson further north, a less desirable alternative but one that’s still in the discussion.
But, folks, these are details that are supposed to be all decided upon before a bond package goes to voter approval, so that voters really have a clear idea what their tax money is going to accomplish. It’s as if that person considering buying a house takes out a loan on the idea, not the actuality, of purchasing a new home.
As I mentioned somewhat offhandedly earlier, we have a mayor and four council members who have assumed their current positions a year after this road bond proposal was approved. I get the sense that they want Kyle to quit its wacky road ways and do these things the way they are supposed to be done. Time will tell. Watch this space.
UPDATE: One other thing worth mentioning is that, what Mayor Webster is describing as a "significant development that will create a lot of new jobs and could include the construction of office space," was put in motion to be located in an area in an area west of I-35, north of Kyle Crossing, west of the quarry and touching the southern edge of Buda’s city limits. The matter was discussed by the council as part of an hour-long executive session and when council members reconvened they voted 4-0 (council members Shane Arabie, who is on a cruise; Samantha Bellows-LeMense, who was ill; and Tammy Swaton did not attend last night’s meeting) "to offer a financial or other incentive to a business prospect that the city council seeks to have locate … in or near the territory of the city council." Mayor Webster assured me after the meeting the incentives were not all that much, but could not be elaborated on further until after the developer agreed to the city’s proposal.
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