I was thinking about all of this during last night’s Kyle City Council meeting because it seemed to me the theme of the meeting was (in one case, quite literally) "Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes." Most of this feeling came during a series of presentations that were more notable for what wasn’t said than for what was. In fact, in one case, nothing was said. The very first presentation on the council’s agenda was called "Presentation of ABA Basketball" (that redundancy comes from the agenda wording, not me). For those not familiar with the ABA, it is a an altogether flaky and a not-particularly-honest basketball league consisting of, believe-it-or-not, 109 teams no one outside its participants are even aware of. That’s right 109 teams. How many of them can you name? I call it not particularly honest because, on its website, it claims to be a direct descendant from the original American Basketball Association that was formed in 1967 and produced such teams as the New Jersey Nets, the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers and, yes, the San Antonio Spurs, that are still alive and well today in the NBA. That claim, however, is simply not true. The only connection this new league has with the original one is that the new league’s co-founder, Richard Tinkham, was at one time an executive with the Indiana Pacers when it was an ABA team before that leagued merged into the NBA in 1976. Tinkham, who’s also largely responsible for the construction of Market Square Arena (which was the former Indianapolis home court of the Pacers until it was demolished in 2001) and his partner Joe Newman (who, to tie this back to the original topic of this article, is an advertising executive), simply licensed the ABA name from the NBA. The reason I call it "altogether flaky" is because, on the average, only 35 percent of its scheduled games are actually played in any given season, at the end of which, between 10 and 50 teams cease to exist. One of the newest of the 109 ABA teams is the Kyle Stallions, which is supposed to play their home games at the Lehman High School gym, which, I’m guessing, was the reason this phantom presentation was on the council’s agenda. I have been trying to track down the name of the "owner" of the team, but, to date, have not been successful. I do know that its general manager is Geoff Harner who is involved in youth basketball programs in Austin and played pro hoops in Lithuania, and its head coach is 23-year-old Damien Goodwin, who coached AAU basketball in his home of Buffalo, N.Y. One of the many things you won’t find on the ABA website is a schedule or any team rosters.
Following the precedent set by a majority of the teams in the ABA, Sylvia Gallo, who was scheduled to make the presentation to the council about the league, was a no-show, so this idea never even made it to the base of the flagpole. Figures.
The next presentation was "on FM 2770 Stormwater" which concerns a major flooding problem along that road near the Hays County Precinct 2 headquarters. What was missing from that presentation, an ingredient both the council and City Manager Scott Sellers recognized, was where the city was going to come up with the money needed, perhaps close to a half million bucks, to install the necessary culverts or possibly even a pedestrian underpass required to solve the problem. So, in this case, the flagpole was simply described, but no one tried to run anything up it.
Then came Precinct 2 County Commissioner Mark Jones who ran up the flagpole the notion to salute the Hays County road bond proposals. What was missing from his presentation were maps, so it could be seen clearly exactly how many of these projects were actually in Kyle or could be reasonably defined as benefitting citizens and/or motorists of Kyle. He did tell the council, however, "We have a web site that you can go to if you want to look at any of these other projects — it’s haysbonds,com — and there’ll be a map on there and you can click on any project on the red dot and it will tell you all about it." Well, I went to haysbonds.com today and found nothing even remotely like what Jones said I would find. However, I finally decided to ignore Jones’s advice and instead tried "hayscountybonds.com" and found what I was looking for and what Jones was describing. Not only that, I quickly discovered why Jones wanted to obscure these maps by giving out a false web address because they clearly show only two of the projects are actually in Kyle, one of which, the FM 150 realignment, Jones omitted from his discussion because, I guess, it’s technically not in his precinct. And the only one that is both in Precinct 2 and in the city of Kyle and, which, admittedly, would have a far-reaching positive effect on traffic flow, is the $1.5 million for the relocation of the Union Pacific Railroad siding near downtown Kyle. Here’s the problem with that, however: First, that project constitutes only 4.2 percent of the entire Precinct 2 bond proposal and only 1 percent of the total Proposition 2 bond proposal. Second. It’s true that Jones and others are promising no property tax rate hike should the proposition pass and I believe this forecast is accurate. However, it does fill up bond capacity; i.e., the county will be unable to borrow any additional funds anytime in the near future on capital projects that might benefit Kyle without a tax rate increase. Third and most important of all, the passage of the proposal does, in no way, guarantee the problem will be fixed. For those not familiar with the situation it is, in its simplest terms, this: Through most of its journey though Kyle, the Union Pacific rail line consists of one track, which can be a logistical problem when a train heading north meets one coming south. There is, just north of downtown, a siding where the train heading in one direction can pull into to let the one going in the other direction pass. The problem is, one of those trains has to stop while the other enters the siding and many is the time the train that stops does so in a way that blocks traffic across the Union Pacific tracks on Center Street, resulting in massive traffic tie-ups. The solution is to move that siding closer to the Kyle Parkway overpass and the $1.5 million in the bond proposal is the amount the county pledges to contribute towards that move. The problem is, from what I’ve been told, the actual cost of moving that siding is at least 10 times that $1.5 million amount. And, for the county to actually pledge that money, Kyle city government would have to match it. If the city is having problems finding the funds required to fix the aforementioned life-threatening flooding problems on 2770, how is it going come up with more than three times as much to fix what is basically a problem of convenience? Not only that, where is the other $10 million coming from. I understand the city and the county are in talks with state and federal officials about this, but that’s all there is: talk.
Next up was this idea designed to salute the other Hays County bond proposal that will go before the voters in next month’s election and that’s $106.4 million to renovate and expand the Hays County Jail, to build a new facility to house the sheriff’s office, crime labs and training centers and improvements to the Hays County 9-1-1 center. What was omitted here was not only any talk about the jail or the new facility for the sheriff but also the fact that two entities are balking at the idea of co-locating their 9-1-1 services in the proposed county facility. The pitch from Erika Carpenter of Hays County was designed to persuade the council to co-locate its 9-1-1 operations with the county’s. The original idea was to merge the emergency dispatch services of Buda, Kyle, Hays County, San Marcos and Texas State University into the one center. But San Marcos has flatly rejected the invitation and the police chief at Texas State is recommending the university not participate either. I asked council member Daphne Tenorio if she was aware of the actions by San Marcos and Texas State. She replied that she wasn’t, but that she definitely wanted to examine those decisions more closely. I then asked council members David Wilson and Shane Arabie "Does it give you pause to know that San Marcos has opted out of the co-location program and Texas State’s police chief is recommending the university do the same." I was met with absolute silence and a stunned look on each of their faces, which I interpreted to be, quite naturally, "a pause," i.e., the affirmative answer to my question. Council member Travis Mitchell said he is still to be convinced that co-location would make sense financially. Only Police Chief Jeff Barnett told me he had actually talked to San Marcos and Texas State officials.
"In meetings where they gave their position they said it wasn’t the right timing for their business model," Barnett told me. "I heard San Marcos mentioning that they were able to expand their current dispatch center in their current facility and that negated some thoughts they had several years ago about trying to find a new location. I heard the university mention that they currently offer a lot of services that they want to continue to offer on campus and moving their dispatch facility at the current time just wasn’t in their business model either."
There’s also personnel problems involved in such a co-located arrangement. Who would the employees actually work for? Who would pay them? Would some still work for and be paid by the county and others still work for and be paid by the cities of Kyle or Buda? What happens when people doing the same job, but work for different government entities, are paid differently or receive different benefits, particularly retirement benefits (which are considerably different between municipal and county employees). Who would they regard as their bosses, the county commissioners who would be the overall directors of the center or the persons who sign their respective pay checks? Who would perform their evaluations and would those evaluations be automatically recognized as acceptable by another government entity? None of these questions were addressed in the presentation.
The final presentation was one on the proposed ESD No.9 and what was omitted from that discussion was any mention in actual dollars how it would effect the tax bill of the average Kyle homeowner. The cost of to the taxpayer of the proposed emergency services district is .047 cents per $100 of appraised property value which, for the owner of a home valued at $200,000 means a $94 addition to his or her tax bill every year, assuming that value of the property remains constant and we all know they ain’t gonna happen. The other issue here, of course, is one of double-billing: Should residents be forced to pay these costs both through their health insurance premiums and their property tax or will voters even be asking themselves this question when they vote on the issue next month?
The literal "run it up the flagpole" item I referred to back in the second paragraph of this missive was the one I discussed ad nauseam in my report on the last Planning & Zoning Commission hearing and that was one to rezone five acres of land at 245 Lehman, a nice looking plot located not more than a quarter mile from Garcia’s Mexican restaurant, from agriculture to retail services with the caveat it could be used for warehouse purposes, specifically "interior and exterior storage." What I think most people envisioned, including, I must admit, yours truly, was a self-storage facility going up there, but, according to Lyndee Jordan, who owns the property along with her husband, that’s not what their plans are. They are talking about flagpoles and I don’t mean virtual ones on which to run up an idea, but actual ones for actual flags.
Jordan told the council last night that she and her husband have operated their business, U.S. Flag and Flagpole Supply, for a quarter of a century.
"My husband built it from nothing," she said. "He does do monster flag poles — a 500-foot pole for the king of Jordan, a 400-foot flag pole in Wisconsin. Right now our office is out of my guest house in Wimberley. We manufacture everything in San Antonio so we’re not going to manufacture our big poles here. When we were in Beaumont for 20 years, everybody knew us because we had a retail store that sold flags, flag poles, collegiate items. We had a nice retail store. We were very well known because we donated flags and flag poles to the area schools. We gave. We supported. Now we want to get this business out of our house in Wimberley and move it to Kyle. It’s a business I’m very proud of. I guess it hurts me that you wouldn’t be proud to have it here."
She went on to describe her husband as someone who is "very vain," which means he will make sure "his storefront is going to look very good." The storage request is one so that the owners can have space both inside and outside the building to store flags, poles and other items required to conduct their business.
Mayor pro tem Damon Fogley moved to run this one up the flagpole and Arabie and Mitchell were the only two council members who chose not to salute.
In other action last night, the council:
- Unanimously approved the appointment of Silvia Torres to the Ethics Commission
- Held another one of its public hearings — this one involving the voluntary annexation of 51½ acres southwest of FM 2770 and FM 1626 — at which no one came to speak.
- Approved on second and final reading the revisions in the city’s landscape and impervious surface ordinances.
- Authorized by a 5-2 vote (Tenorio and Mayor Todd Webster voting "no’) the one-year renewal of a contract that will allow Kyle motorcycle cops to keep riding their 2014 model Harley-Davidsons.
- Unanimously approved a resolution to accept a federal grant that would pay for 57 percent of the salary for the Kyle Police Department’s juvenile justice officer.
- Heard about an idea from Sellers about a possible "council retreat," which I will expound upon more in the not-too-distant future.
- Following an executive session that was scheduled, according to the agenda, to allow the council to discuss "property acquisitions for road bond projects," directed the staff to prepare an ordinance "to begin condemnation for property located at 1119 South Old Highway 81, the Mattox property," according to Arabie. I had two questions about this that went unanswered. First, should this address have been 1199 South Old Highway 81 and not 1119? Second, what does any property on South Old Highway 81 have to do with the current "road bond projects"?
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