The Kyle City Council voted 6-0 Monday evening to ask voters whether they are willing to spend an average of $160.53 a year for the next 20 years in increased property taxes to build a new police station (the official rendering of which is pictured above) and an additional $43.37 a year for a new sports complex and upgrades to existing park infrastructure.
Voters will get to decide whether these additions and upgrades are worth the cost on the same Nov. 3 General Election ballot in they will also decide on three city council positions as well as such items as who they want to be president of the United States for the next four years.
According to a news release from the city, “In light of COVID-19, council has deferred the tax rate impact until October 2021,” which is not exactly true. If voters approve the bond measure, it is true that the first tax bills to include the additional taxes won’t be mailed until October 2021, but the reason has nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with the fact that, as Finance Director Perwez A. Moheet told the council, the bonds won’t be issued until March or April of 2021.
The price tag for the police station bonds is $37 million and the parks bonds would cost $10 million.
Moheet told the council the estimated property tax increase for the new police headquarters would be $.0744 per $100 valuation,
“For an average homestead in Kyle, which has a net value of $215,762, the annual impact of the tax increase will be $160.53 or $13.38 a month,” Moheet said. For Proposition B — the parks bonds — Moheet estimated the property tax increase at $.0201 per $100 valuation for an increased tax bill of $43.37 per year or $3.61 per month for that same home currently listed on the tax rolls for $215,762.
It’s important to note that Moheet’s estimates are based on the current evaluations which means there’s a possibility that the tax rate won’t have to be increased — that what might happen is property values will increase enough to provide that $203.90 per year per household in additional tax revenue without a tax increase. But that’s a gamble the voters will be betting on when they make their decision at the polls in November. And, in the event of an economic recession akin to the one that hit in the early years of this century, failure to increase the property tax rate would likely result in the necessity to severely curtail much-needed city services.
Mayor Travis Mitchell along with council members Robert Rizo, Alex Villalobos, Rick Koch and Michael Tobias were particularly gung-ho about the bond proposition. Council member Dex Ellison, while voting to put the items on the ballot, did not speak on the issue and the seventh council member, Tracy Scheel, whose name will also be on the same ballot as she is seeking re-election to her District 2 seat, did not participate in Monday’s meeting.
“The truth is we’ve been passing the police department around in inferior facilities for the better part of a decade now,” Mayor Mitchell said. “That is certainly something you can get away with for a period of time. But we really have reached a point of no return. The city council is faced with the decision of whether we want to adequately invest in the police department with the resources they need to do their job or whether we think it’s appropriate to continue with the facilities they already have.”
Later in the meeting Mitchell said “Our residents deserve high quality public safety services in a purpose-built facility that will last for the next 20 years and beyond.”
According to the city's official statement, the police building bond proposition would pay for the construction of a 64,000 square foot, two-story facility "that would provide dedicated space to fully staff the police department – in a single location – with room to grow over the next 20 years. Additionally, the Public Safety Center would create dedicated space to create an Emergency Operations Center where the city could collaborate with surrounding counties and authorities during critical times such as natural disasters, community-wide security threats, or even pandemics like COVID-19."
Mitchell mentioned what is happening in Austin where its city council voted unanimously last week to eliminate funding for three planned police cadet classes and reallocating those funds to areas like violence prevention, food access and abortion access programs. Additional cuts in Austin would come from a year-long process that will redistribute money used for civilian functions like forensic sciences, support services and victims’ services to other departments. About $50 million would come from reallocating dollars to a “Reimagine Safety Fund” that would divert money toward “alternative forms of public safety and community support through the year-long reimagining process.”
“The City of Kyle is not defunding the police,” Mitchell said. “We’re investing in the department. We are not blindly supporting whatever the police want to do. What we’re really trying to do is take a balanced approach that includes investing in the department and at the same time allows for the community to have a bigger impact on the type of police department we want to see.”
Mitchell said Kyle is below the national average in the number of sworn police officers per 1,000 residents, although, as director of public information for the City of Dallas, I participated in a national audit cities with more than 500,000 in population that revealed that the cities with the lowest crime rates also had the lowest number of officers per 1,000 population. In addition, the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) recently issued a white paper arguing this method should not be used by cities to determine proper police staffing.
The $10 million parks bond sale would be used to fund a sports complex and festival grounds ($7 million) at the northern edge of the Uptown Development, $2 million to upgrade the Plum Creek Trail east of the interstate and $1 million for improvements to Gregg-Clarke Park, which would include the installation of the skate park long advocated by the Kyle Area Youth Advisory Committee.
Theoretically, the $10 million would be matched by Hays County, contingent on whether county voters approve a $75 million bond proposal which will also be on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Mitchell said that translates into a total of $20 million “of parks improvements in the City of Kyle while the actual taxpayers in the City of Kyle would be responsible for only half that,” which is a tad disingenuous because Kyle residents also have to pay county taxes as well as city taxes. In fact, Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra, noting the economic uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic, said in statement “This may seem like an unlikely time for a bond election, but Hays taxpayers and voters deserve to have their say on this important decision.”
Thanks to Monday’s vote by the city council, so will Kyle taxpayers and voters.
No comments:
Post a Comment