Council member Daphne Tenorio abruptly and without explanation left the council dias today making it possible for the council to authorize by a 4-0 vote a Public Improvement District designed to finance mainly sewer, street and drainage improvements in areas bordering a planned residential development just west of I35 between Opal and Rowland lanes.
Tenorio was actually the first council member to assume her seat on the dias for this special city council meeting, followed by council member Travis Mitchell and Mayor Todd Webster. I have reached out to Tenorio asking her why she left, but have yet to receive a response, so speculation must prevail. For some reason Tenorio opposes all PIDs, even extremely valuable and worthwhile PIDs like this one that are designed to work as PIDs are supposed to. Of course, the reality is, Tenorio doesn’t oppose PIDs, but what PIDs represent and that’s development. She has become a tool of the anti-growth movement in Kyle. So, it’s more than reasonable to assume Tenorio left the council chambers thinking she would deny the council the quorum required to hold the vote on the PID request, which, strategically speaking, was precisely the wrong move to make because all she did was assure its passage by her departure.
The truth is there is nothing she could have done to derail the PID. At most, she could have delayed it until the council’s next meeting on Nov. 21. But the only way she could have done that is to remain on the dias. Had she done that, she would have learned during the roll call that council member Becky Selbera was en route to City Hall, so a quorum would eventually be there regardless (council members Shane Arabie and David Wilson were out of the city early today). But, had Tenorio remained, she could have maneuvered to force the council to vote on the PID request before Selbera arrived and a 3-1 vote to approve (with Tenorio being the lone opposition) would not be sufficient to approve it because at least four votes are required for the council to approve anything. The reason that tactic would not have killed the PID, however — only delayed it — is because Mitchell or Webster, perhaps both, would have undoubtedly voted with Tenorio to deny approval and then one or both of them would have requested reconsideration of the item on the Nov. 21 agenda (only a council member on the prevailing side of a vote can request reconsideration).
Only two persons, Lila Knight and Tim Miller, appeared to speak during the public hearing on the PID and, to their credit, both actually addressed the issue of the PID itself, and not whether the property should be developed as planned, which was the off-the-topic subject of many of the preceding public hearings associated with this development. As Mayor Webster said twice during today’s meeting, the development will take place, regardless of whether the PID is approved.
Ninety percent of the roughly $6.4 million in revenue expected to be generated by the sale of the PID’s bonds will be used to finance improvements outside the development itself and even the 10 percent that will be applied to the development is to be used to transform what some who live in the area refer to as a swamp into usable park land, which certainly can be categorized as a neighborhood improvement worthy of a PID. The PID representative who attended today’s meeting told council members present that the annual PID assessment is expected to be between $860 and $875, which will part of the same escrow account lenders establish to pay all local property taxes. That means the overall price tag on a home in this development will be up to $17,500 higher than the actual market value of the home and could also place these homeowners in a position of having to pay interest on their assessments, which increases the total assessment even more. Of course, a prospective homeowner could pay the entire assessment at closing to avoid the interest, but, economically speaking, that would not be a sound move unless the buyer was fully committed to owning that property for 20 or more years.
Assistant City Manager James Earp told the council "the most important" improvement to be financed by the revenue generated by the sale of the PID bonds is a sewer connection. "There’s no sewer in that part of town," he told the council. "The city is building the southside sewer project which will allow the sewer to be collected at Yarrington and then pumped back to our plant up the interstate frontage road. But the collection system on the west side of the interstate needs to be built and that’s what one of the fundamental items in the PID is for the subdivision to be able to build that sewer infrastructure.
"Probably the next two things that are important are the transportation networks," Earp continued. "The roads, Opal and Rowland, are both under-built and any amount of traffic that would be generated by a new development would put an undue burden on the roadway." Earp said the normal policy is to require developers to pay half the costs of needed roadway improvements. "In this case, the developers are rebuilding the entire section of the road from beyond their entrances points back toward the interstate."
Webster asked Earp whether the developers were simply rebuilding the road or improving it.
"It’s going to be wider," Earp answered. "I think it’s a three-lane segment."
A third component, Earp said, were the installation of silent crossings where Roland and Opal lanes cross the railroad tracks. In an obviously unplanned, but highly ironic moment, Earp had to speak over the sound of a train whistle to tell the council the railroad tracks run along the eastern boundary of the development. "The city is trying to move toward having all of our crossings in the city be silent crossings. And these were two silent crossings the city had on its list to do in the future. But because of the development, the development has agreed to take those silent crossings on as a part of their development and pay for it through the PID financing."
"It’s very rare for a development to do that type of improvements we’re taking on," said Brett Corwin, project manager for Intermandeco, the developer of the project. "Usually you stay within and along the boundary of your property and you’re only responsible for just half of that. So we’re going above and beyond to make sure that the connectivity from (Interstate) 35 is sufficient for the neighborhood. And when we add the quiet crossings on our project and bundle them with the ones the city is already working on then you’ll have a lot quieter city council meetings."
Corwin said the drainage pipes servicing Opal and Rowland lanes are "completely insufficient …so what we’re putting in will help a ton. It’s a huge upgrade as far as drainage goes on the roads."
Webster said as long as prospective buyers are fully informed about the PID and the costs associated with it before they purchase a home, he’s on board with the funding mechanism. "It accomplishes what I’ve heard over and over and over and over again for 20 years: ‘All this development’s coming in and it’s raising our taxes.’ This is a mechanism to make sure that tax burden for those infrastructure improvements is not borne by everyone in the community."
No comments:
Post a Comment