Mayor seeks to reconsider Tenorio’s appointment to water board

During a meeting Tuesday in which the council is prepared to spend close to $10,000 on a pair of presumably doggie-friendly drinking fountains, see a presentation on a trail network that is supposed to connect Kyle to Austin and San Marcos but seems to be located a good distance west of Kyle, perhaps the most intriguing item is one proposed by Mayor Travis Mitchell to reconsider a vote the council took just two weeks ago to appoint council member Daphne Tenorio to the Alliance Regional Water Authority Board.

The mayor is maintaining silence about the reasons behind this movie ("We will not comment on item 4 at this time," he told me when I asked why it was appearing on Tuesday’s meeting agenda), but, of course, that’s not going to stop me from engaging in speculation based strictly on my own hunches and instincts.

I wondered why the council approved Tenorio on the board based on her past public criticisms of ARWA, but mainly because of her response to council member Tracy Scheel who asked her during the Jan. 9 council meeting why she wanted to be a member of the board.

"I met with a water person about big bills coming from this area," Tenorio said at the time. "I want to understand the processes of why these bills are so high. These bills that are coming from this board are affecting all of our families directly, Most people don’t realize how high their water bills are about to go."

From that response, it’s difficult to determine exactly what "bills" she is talking about, but I presume she is referring to the monthly bills Kyle residents receive to pay for the water they use. And if that’s the case, here’s the concern: ARWA has nothing whatsoever to do with these bills. Yes, it is true that ARWA has secured the rights to water in the Carrizo Springs Aquifer and will be constructing a system to ship that water to its members, one of which is Kyle. And, yes, it is true that there is a cost for that water and that system and Kyle is responsible for paying its share of that cost. But that share has already been determined and agreed upon by all parties so that does not appear to be a debatable issue. And, yes, the city has talked about paying for its share through a water bill rate hike. But that’s a decision for the Kyle City Council to make. It’s not up to ARWA to decide how Kyle will finance its share of the project costs. For example, the city’s Financial Magician Wizard Director Perwez Moheet could find a way because of the rapidly increasing property values, new business ventures coming to down (especially those north of Kohler’s Crossing), and the paying down of the road bonds, to finance Kyle’s share of the project with General Obligations bonds that don’t increase the property tax rate. It’s possible. But that’s a decision the city will make and the city council will approve. ARWA doesn’t have a voice in that.

So my concern at the time Tenorio was approved was whether she understood exactly what the function and the jurisdiction of the ARWA board was and what the responsibilities would be of Kyle’s representative on that board. In my mind, the main responsibility is to make sure Kyle gets its fair share of the water coming from Carrizo Springs. But nowhere in her response to Scheel’s question did I hear Tenorio say anything like "I want to represent and protect the best interests and the future water needs of our city" or that "I want to work with other board members to see how we can keep costs under control."

(Updated Sunday 12:07 p.m.) Tenorio told me moments ago the bills she was referring to are those the city will have to pay for its share of the project.

Council member Shane Arabie, who is Kyle’s other representative on the ARWA board, missed the Jan. 9 meeting because his work these days has him spending a lot of time on the western fringes of Houston. Hopefully, he will be able to make this Tuesday’s meeting because I, for one, would love to hear his views on the Tenorio appointment. He is someone who could either calm or further stoke my fears concerning this appointment. And perhaps the only reason Mitchell wants to reconsider the appointment is because Arabie has already assured the mayor he will be attending Tuesday and Mitchell is seeking Arabie’s public input as well. However, I actually think Mitchell’s motivation has more to do with the fact that he really wants to serve on the ARWA board and he feels the council pulled the chair out from under him just as he was about to sit in it. That is also just a hunch — I have no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise — to support that notion, but it’s still a persistent part of my thought processes as I think about what’s going on here. I guess we’ll all learn more about this Tuesday.

But back to those fountains and those trails.

Item 9 on Tuesday’s agenda is to spend $49,895 for the first phase of what Parks and Rec Director Kerry Urbanowicz says will ultimate be a $150,000 facility consisting of essentially two fenced-in dog parks — one for regular dogs and a second for smaller ones — to be built in Steeplechase Park. The $150,000, Urbanowicz says, will pay for a dog park that features "shade-covered benches and benches throughout the park, pervious walking trails within the park, trees and plants, dog washing station, trash cans, pet waste stations and pervious-paved parking." He said the first $50,000 is part of this fiscal year’s budget and that it will pay for "the fences, water fountains and transition zones (presumably the connection between the two dog areas); that he is hoping next year’s budget will include another $50,000 for the park; and that the final $50,000 "will come from donations, grants and partnerships from the public."

The first year costs include $28,972 for fencing, $2,344 for the gates to each of the two parks, another $2,954 for the fencing and gates at entrance to both parks and $9,970 for a pair of drinking fountains. I’m presuming it’s a drinking fountain along the lines of the one pictured here, although I have no way of knowing that. The $9,970 price tag seemed a tad high at first glance, but upon further research I guess, if you include the required concrete pad you see in this picture, it might be in the ballpark.

But what had me more excited than the water fountains, which would not spur me to drive clear across town to take my loyal canine companion to this particular facility, was the second slide in the presentation that Urbanowicz will probably show the council — the slide that, at first glance, seemed to indicate the dog park might be on the shores of a lake of some sort. My dog loves the water, She loves to plunge in and swim. That’s why she loves the beach and really enjoys the trails around the pond at Plum Creek. But every time I have taken her to a dog park — and I have taken her to more than a dozen different ones — and removed her leash, she doesn’t move, doesn’t run around, doesn’t want to engage with any of the other humans or canines there. The only exception was a dog park the City of Dallas located on the shores of White Rock Lake, She loved it there because she could jump in the lake and swim to her heart’s content. But when I inquired about that second slide in Urbanowicz’s presentation I learned from city spokesperson Kim Hilsenbeck that it "reflects the 100-year flood zone line and how we made efforts to be out of the zone as much as possible." So, maybe after a good rain, like we’ve had too many of lately …?

Item 3 on Tuesday’s agenda is captioned a "presentation by the Emerald Crown Trail Work Group on a proposed trail connecting Buda, Kyle and San Marcos to the Violet Crown Trail in Austin to the Purgatory Trail in southern Hays County." This is completely speculative. This is an idea being promoted by an organization calling itself the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance, a 19-year-old all-volunteer non-profit group, although it goes out of its way in the presentation to say the proposed regional trail is not a SMGA project, that it is only serving as a "catalyst" for the trail’s partners (one of whom is the City of Kyle) and its stakeholders.

According to Community Impact newspaper, SMGA President Mark Taylor told Hays County commissioners Tuesday that transportation was the primary purpose of the proposed trail. "This trail will be to get people from one place to another," the newspaper quoted Taylor as telling the commissioners. "I think we will ultimately find — if we’re able to put this project together — that our communities (will be) connected more closely. That includes not just the three cities but the rural areas."

The newspaper also said that SMGA recruited geography students at Texas State University to map several proposed trails that would connect natural areas in San Marcos to the Violet Crown in South Austin. Judging from the presentation the council is expected to see Tuesday, as far as Kyle is concerned, it’s the "rural areas" and not the city itself that will be connected. All six of the proposed routes appear to be located far west of the Kyle city limits.

All this, it must be added, is nowhere close to reality. The alliance must still develop a concept/master plan, determine funding sources and talk to the landowners/developers who might be directly impacted by the trail.

For what it’s worth, the Violet Crown website states "In 2006, planning of the Violet Crown Trail began. Its purpose is to create the first regional trail system in Central Texas. After years of strategic land acquisition and planning, the first six-mile segment opened. With continued construction, the VCT is on its way to becoming the longest trail of its kind in Central Texas. Once complete the 30-mile trail will provide a unique recreational experience as it passes through the urban wildlands of the Barton Creek Wilderness Park, the City of Sunset Valley, and eventually into Hays County. Along its route the trail will connect scenic natural areas to neighborhoods, shopping centers, a library, and public parks. Passing near the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the Violet Crown Trail will head south, winding through the rolling countryside of the City of Austin’s Water Quality Protection Lands in a uniquely natural setting."

Council to meet in special session Nov. 4

The City Council last night scheduled a special meeting for 9 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, to conduct a public hearing on the creation of a Public Improvement District (PID) in connection with a development planned for property immediately west of the railroad tracks, between Opal and Roland Lanes, that, if recent history is any indication, will attract a number of persons who will talk about everything but the subject of the public hearing.

As regular readers are well ware, I am no friend of Kyle’s PID policy, but I have absolutely no problem with this proposal. Let me see if I can explain why. First, let me tell you why I oppose, generally speaking, Kyle’s way of handling these funding mechanisms. As already noted in the first paragraph, the "I" in "PID" stands for "Improvement." Kyle, however, employs PIDs, for the most part, to help finance developments, not improvements. The way a PID is created is quite simple. The owners of the majority of the properties wishing to have a PID for a specific project must formally approve its creation, knowing that by approving it they are pledging to pay for the bonds sold to finance the project as well as the interest on the bonds. Usually they are committing to pay these costs in monthly installments over the life of the PID. However, when it’s used to finance a new development, there is usually just one, perhaps two, owners/stakeholders who agree that a PID should be created, but it’s repaid, not by those original owners/stakeholders, but by all the individuals who purchase homes in the development and had absolutely no voice in the creation of the PID. That’s why I have claimed Kyle’s PID policy amounts to taxation without representation.

But this PID is different — markedly different. First, and most important in my mind, is the fact that the most of the money derived from this PID will be used for improvements, not development. Specifically, it will be spent on widening and improving Roland and Opal lanes from the entrances to the development across the railroad tracks. It will also be used to improve drainage in the immediate neighborhood of the development. But even more important than that, the PID will be used to finance the installation of quiet railroad crossings on Roland and Opal Lanes. Those installations, combined with the city-financed quiet crossings at Center and South streets, will eliminate the need for trains to sound those irritatingly loud horns anywhere in the city of Kyle, thus drastically improving the quality of life here. I hope readers noticed I many times I used a form of the word "improve" in this paragraph.

Here’s the second reason I can support this PID. Because of changes to Kyle’s PID policy instituted by council member Travis Mitchell (who joined the council after the original PID policy was adopted) anyone purchasing a home in this development must be made aware, before that purchase, that they are also committing to pay an additional $120 a month — in addition to their mortgage payment, in addition to any homeowners association fees, in addition to their property taxes — as a PID assessment. If that home buyer agrees to that, then that, to me, is tantamount to voting for the creation of the PID in the first place.

Now, why do I say that this planned public hearing "if recent history is any indication, will attract a number of persons who will talk about everything but the subject of the public hearing." It’s because, within the last eight days, two different city panels, the Planning & Zoning Commission and the City Council, had items relating to this development on their respective agendas that attracted individuals who came to talk on a subject that had nothing to do with what was on those agendas. So I don’t see why this Saturday’s meeting should deviate from that norm. On Oct. 10, the Planning & Zoning Commission’s agenda included an item for the commissioners to consider a preliminary plan for the development and to possibly suggest changes to that plan that didn’t violate the Development Agreement already in place for the development but possibly aligned it more closely with the recently approved Design Guide. A number of speakers, most of those living near the planned the development, came to the meeting wanting the commissioners to stop the development, a subject that was not up for discussion. During last night’s city council meeting that contained an item to consider accepting the PID application and petition (by the majority of stakeholders, which, in this case, was one) to create the PID, most of these same individuals who showed up at P&Z the week before came to the council to voice their complaints, not about the PID, but by the proposed density of the project and the fact that it will include (horror of horrors!!!) a multi-family component. Again, not the subject of the agenda item.

So I’m predicting (although I really do hope I am wrong about this) many of these same folks will find the willpower to get to City Hall early on the first Saturday in November to complain some more. Here, however, is why I hope I am wrong. How can anyone in their right mind oppose road improvements, drainage improvements right outside their homes that they don’t have to finance through their own tax dollars? How can they oppose making their community eminently more peaceful by eliminating trains blaring their horns right outside their doors that they don’t have to pay for out of their tax dollars either? But I’m predicting they will. I could even foresee one city council member arguing against it. But their only arguments have to be off the subject, because arguing on the subject simply doesn’t make any sense. At least, as far as I can see. All those coming to speak against the likely agenda item on Nov. 4, regardless of the words that come out of their mouths, will be those still arguing not to locate the development there and refusing to accept the reality of the situation which is, frankly, that ship has sailed, that subject has been off the table for quite some time now. Sisyphus lives in Kyle.

Perhaps as many as three members of the council thought last night’s meeting might be their final one as a member of the council and, in somewhat of an ironic twist, the Nov. 4 meeting adds one more to their list. But Mayor Todd Webster believes it isn’t an added burden.

"My goal in these last few city council meetings is to complete all those projects we started," he told me "That’s why there have been what might be viewed as a large number of items on these recent agendas. "This next meeting will complete those projects.".

The following also happened during last night’s council meeting.

• Of the 20 agenda items the council voted on, 19 of them passed unanimously. However, those unanimous votes were 6-0 because council member Daphne Tenorio, who obviously was suffering from something health related, said at the beginning of the citizens comment period she had just been released from a hospital only hours before the meeting began and was "in a great deal of pain." She asked to be excused from the remainder of the meeting, a request the rest of the council readily agreed to. However, before she left, she said she would have opposed two items related to improvements and changes in the Cool Springs subdivision (although one of those items was the only one on the agenda that received a dissenting vote), all the proposed zoning changes and "the Plum Creek business parks." She was not clear on which of two items involving development in Plum Creek she was referring to, but I’m going to naturally assume it was the one to approve a plat for two commercial lots and not the one involving an agreement with the Plum Creek Development Partners, Ltd., that will save the city close to $10 million.
• It is also worth noting that one of the rezoning items — to allow for RV zoning — was denied by a unanimous vote so her opposition to that proposed change would have made the final tally 7-0 instead of 6-0.
• The city formally accepted the Police Department Audit and I learned the Operations Review Committee will meet at 1 p.m. Monday to decided which one of the audit’s recommendations should be implemented. "We are very excited about the opportunity to discuss and implement the recommendations they brought forward," Police Chief Jeff Barnett told me after the council meeting adjourned at 11:59 p.m. "Because I truly believe all the recommendations can improve our operations, we’re excited about any all of them that will come out of that committee."
• City Manager Scott Sellers made a special presentation to "allow the council to reflect on three great years" and "what we have accomplished together" in that time, before reading from a lengthy and impressive list of those accomplishments. Sellers concluded by telling the council members the city staff had willingly bought into "four core values that truly guide us in all that we do. And those core values spell the word "Kyle" — Knowledge, Yes Attitude, Leading Edge, Employee Accountability. We live by our core values. They are hung in our departments. We wear ‘Team Kyle" wristbands. It is something we live and we’re happy to live it. It has shaped the way our citizens feel about living in our city — they are proud to live in the city of Kyle. All of our new employees quickly learn about our fantastic culture here and that culture is set from the (city council) dias. We couldn’t be happier for the progress we have made or the direction we have received for the tasks and the great projects we have been able to carry through together under your guidance and leadership. And I want to thank your for that. And I want to thank the staff that’s worked tirelessly to bring all that about over the last three years."
• After the vote to deny the RV zoning on Dacy Lane, council member Shane Arabie sharply criticized certain comments made during the public hearing on the item. "Every time we’ve had something come in front of us that somebody didn’t like it was always the sex offender talk or it increased the crime rate. And that’s with every piece of property somebody didn’t like next to them. It’s not about ‘I don’t like it in my back yard," because that doesn’t give you the right to say what can go there. They own that property. Not you. You didn’t buy the property. They bought it. Just like you bought your home and you can decide what to do with it." After mentioning he currently resides in an RV Park, along with a close friend "who makes six figures a year," Arabie told the audience ‘So every time you say there’s a sex offender living there, look at me, because I’m the person that going’s to be living in these upscale, nice RV parks. So remember, when you put that picture out there, you’re talking about me and my friend that works in the physics department whose making the part that works in almost every piece of electronics you hold in your hand — people who I guarantee are among the top 1 percent educated on this planet. So just be mindful of who you’re talking about when you talk about this,"
• After the council heard a presentation that the city can save as much as 75 percent on vehicle maintenance costs and 25 percent on fuel costs, the council voted to implement a one-year pilot program to turn over the city’s acquisition and maintenance of its non-heavy vehicle fleet to Enterprise.
• The council also authorized the purchase of five gateway signs and at least 16 wayfinding directional signs.

Council OKs multi-use development on once-contentious property

In what city council member Travis Mitchell called "a home run for the city," the council unanimously approved a tax incentive agreement with a developer last night that paves the way for what is being called the Kyle Gateway, a retail development that will include an anchor store of at least 50,000 square feet, a hotel, additional retail outlets and "non-drive-through restaurants" to be located on 47.74 acres that many feared two years ago would become a massive truck stop.

According to the agreement, Kyle Gateway, located on the northwest corner of I35 and Yarrington Road, will include a 50,000-square-foot "department/grocery store anchor" that must open for business by the end of 2025. It will also be the site of "a national flag chain hotel having a minimum of 81 rooms" and "additional retail and non-residential facilities (i.e., office space) having an aggregate square footage totaling approximately 300,000 square feet." The agreement also specifies "front pad sites will be reserved for sales tax generating retail and non-drive through restaurants." The developer is required to have enough of these retail outlets open and in operation by the beginning of 2025 to be able to employ at least 100 full-time equivalent employees.

Except for the aforementioned deadlines, there is no construction timetable for the project although Economic Development Director Diana Blank Torres said she expects work to begin on the project "almost immediately." Mayor Todd Webster wasn’t so sure, however. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if PGI Investment, the company Kyle entered into this agreement with, flips the property.

"This is what we’ve been saying all along with go on this property," Webster said, "We have now simply put sone numbers around it. It’s about $5,2 million in roads, wastewater and water."

The agreement calls for the developer to initially bear that $5.2 million cost. However, it would be reimbursed to PGI over the next 10 years by the city rebating 50 percent of the city sales taxes generated by the outlets on the property., with the option of extending that another five years if the $5.2 million is not completely reimbursed. The initial 10-ear period begins Jan. 1, 2020.

"The folks that we’re dealing with build convenience stores and truck stops," Webster said. "What took so long is we’re working this thing out with people who don’t have experience doing large scale developments. The agreement is transferable if the city approves. I don’t know what their plans are, but I suspect it could be something that could be flipped to somebody that has experience in developing that kind of real estate. That would be my expectation."

The $5.2 million would cover the costs of a 3,500-linear-foot spine and cross road from Yarrington to Post Road, a traffic signal, a 2,400-linear-foot eight-inch water line, a 400-linear-foot 12-inch water line, 10 fire hydrants, a 2,300-linear-foot 12-inch wastewater line and 10 manholes.

‘They’re gonna have a lot of work ahead of them as far as infrastructure down there," Torres said, "because it’s a big dip down."

"I thought I would have this thing done in three months and it took two years," Webster said.

When PGI first announced its plans to locate a truck stop on the property in 2015, citizens, the overwhelming majority of which lived on the south side of Yarrington in San Marcos, overflowed City Council Chambers Jan. 26, 2016 during a Planning & Zoning Commission hearing to consider a change in the zoning that would allow for the truck stop. Although the commission voted 5-2 against, the vote was deemed illegal because many of the commissioners said expressly they were voting against the truck stop instead of deciding a zoning issue. As a result, it appeared the truck stop idea would move forward. The announcement of the illegality of the P&Z vote resulted in former San Marcos Mayor Daniel Guerrero threatening retaliation in the form of a condemnation resolution against Kyle if the truck stop wasn’t halted. Webster responded by saying he had tried to meet with Guerrero a number of times to resolve the issue, "and I each time I got blown off." Webster added defiantly "People of action don’t write resolutions."

That exchange led almost immediately to Guerrero seeking an audience with Webster to resolve the issue which ended with the announcement of a development that was, for all practical purposes, identical to the one provided in the agreement approved last night except that San Marcos is no longer providing previously agreed-to wastewater services. San Marcos has since claimed wastewater could not flow via gravity from the site to its wastewater treatment facilities.

"We will collect 100 percent of the property taxes from this substantial development," Mitchell said, "and 50 percent of the sales tax from that development for 10 years. That other 50 percent would go to rebate them for the construction of this public infrastructure that the city would otherwise have to pay. So it’s a very, very good project."

Mitchell, joined by council member Becky Selbera, then thanked Mayor Webster and others who Mitchell claimed worked tirelessly to get the deal done. "We had a situation where there was a land use proposed that wasn’t very desirable and we are absolutely turning the corner on that into a project that we can all be really proud of. Absolutely, from a financial standpoint, a home run for the city."

In other action last night:

• The council heard assistant city manager James Earp refute all the claims made by the 11 persons, seven of whom spoke longer than the three minutes allotted to them, trying to prevent a bridge over the Blanco River from being a part of the city’s Transportation Master Plan, and then voted unanimously to incorporate the bridge and four other changes to the plan.
• Voted unanimously to add Office/Institutional to the city’s list of zoning categories .It is expected another new category that will allow for mixed-used developments, will appear on the council’s agenda next month.
• Voted unanimously to nominate Community Impact publisher Rick Koch as a member of the 2018-19 Hays Central Appraisal District board of trustees. Interestingly, the council had not settled on a nominee when the item came up on the agenda, but readily agreed Koch would be the perfect choice after council member Shane Arabie pointed Koch out in the City Hall foyer.
• The council unanimously voted to reappoint three the persons mentioned in this story to the Planning & Zoning Commission as well as the three cited in that same story to the Economic Development & Tourism Board.
• The council reaffirmed the correctness of the minutes of its Aug. 1 meeting before approving them and three other sets of minutes. Council member Daphne Tenorio questioned the validity of the Aug. 1 minutes because it recorded one vote was 6-0, yet all seven council members were present. It turned out the 6-0 vote was correct because Tenorio herself had abstained from voting on that item and that abstention wasn’t duly recorded because Tenorio failed to complete and submit the required abstention forms. Tenorio did not attend last night’s meeting and thus perhaps saved herself from some embarrassment on this matter.

Webster calls budget proposal “a landmark for the city”; Mitchell, Sellers explain beautification plan

Council member Shane Arabie made an excellent point after tonight’s City Council meeting adjourned. He measured the level of excellence of the city manager’s proposed budget by the number of people who came to the public hearing to talk about it. Two. Only two people spoke during tonight’s public meeting and one of them was incredibly misinformed about the contents of the budget (she erroneously thought the "Beautification Plan" was part of it) and the other admitted she didn’t have a clue about how to read the budget. The fact that the second person is an announced candidate for mayor should set off some alarms, but there you have it. Of course, that might not be as strange as a sitting council member being absolutely clueless about the funding sources of a projected spending item.

"In past budget public hearings, I have seen this room jammed with people who wanted to complain about the budget for one reason or another," Arabie said. "And tonight, there were just two. Only two. That’s amazing and illustrates just how good this budget is."

Mayor Todd Webster and council member Travis Mitchell, a candidate for mayor (but, I hasten to add, not the candidate I referred to in the first paragraph) both expressed their pleasure over the budget during the council’s discussion on whether to amend it at all. One of the ways I could easily measure the council’s affirmative reaction to the city’s proposed budget is that, for the first time since I’ve been in Kyle, not a single change to the budget was recommended during this second consideration of the document. Not only that, no amendments were offered at last week’s hearing either.

The current budget will be the fourth Webster has witnessed since becoming mayor and he went through other budget deliberations while serving on the council between 2003 and 2006. He said his frustrations with those earlier budgets stemmed from the fact "There were so many needs, so many things that we had to get done and we were always having to put off things. The revenues weren’t there. The economy hadn’t grown to a point where we could address very important infrastructure issues. To my recollection I don’t remember us doing anything that was comprehensive in terms of quality of life issues and things that people said that they wanted. Even three years ago, I felt we were still behind the curve.

"For the first time with this budget I feel like we’re ahead of the curve. We’ve addressed the infrastructure needs that really must happen. We’re addressing the water, the wastewater and the stormwater issues. We finally have a street maintenance program. We have so many infrastructure projects in the pipeline we had to add two positions just to inspect them all. To be able to do that and still be able to address a handful of the quality of life amenities and things that people have consistently been begging for over the last two decades and at the same time to offer a tax rate reduction I think is really extraordinary — something I never imagined could have happened during my time up here. I recognize this budget for what it is — a landmark budget for the city. It’s evidence to me that we’ve turned the corner."

Council member Daphne Tenorio mistakenly thought the $14,000 projected cost of relocating an electronic sign from City Square Park to the Public Works Building was an actual budget item, but Sellers corrected her and said it was just that — a projection of something that might happen, but, as it turns out, won’t.

The target of the one of the two speakers at tonight’s budget hearing was the city’s so-called Beautification Plan which Mitchell, "just as a point of clarification," pointed out was just a presentation, but also not part of the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

"The Beautification Plan, as originally approved by council a year ago, basically took certain items from the budget that were beautification related and put them in a plan just from a priority standpoint," City Manager Scott Sellers added. "We took items from that plan and helped prioritize some items in this budget and then went back and looked at other priority projects related to beautification and put them in the plan to help shape future budgets. So at this point it really is just picking and choosing.

"One of the big projects of the Beautification Plan, for example, is Center Street widening — sidewalks, etc.," he continued. "We’ve had that in our CIP for quite a while. That’s $5.5 million. Lehman, Burleson, Marketplace — each of those are technically considered beautification. Sidewalk additions, nice pedestrian-scaled lighting, etc. So it was really just helping the council and the staff establish priorities in the future. It really wasn’t intended to set any sort of budget at all.

"Over the last several years and probably even much longer than that the city has been somewhat criticized for spending too much money on the intangibles, the non-visual improvements, which were extremely important because they were infrastructure-related," Sellers said. "But the quality of life initiatives, the improvements to the parks, the visual improvements to walkability and visibility were not prioritized. What the Beautification Plan was intended to do — and I believe doing a good job of — is highlighting those items we actually are working on that fit into that quality of life category and that we will continue to work on over the years."

Mitchell called Sellers’s beautification presentation "a great plan" and objections to it "much ado about nothing."

"It was literally just putting some projects in front of us and giving us the opportunity to provide some feedback for the future on many projects we have regularly put off because they don’t rise to the level of spending city tax dollars on them at this time," Mitchell said. "But they still are good projects that we want to look at for the future and keep them on the list because if the time ever came when we could identify funding or where the funding made sense for us, we could move forward. So it was a great plan.

"It’s pretty incredible just how far we’ve come," Mitchell said. "We’ve had to do a lot of heavy lifting in the past. Just the fact that we’re even able to start to talk about a Beautification Plan and to start to look at some of these projects while simultaneously having a $10 million lighter budget than last year and a three-cent lighter tax rate on citizens after another 1-cent tax rate the previous year means we’re leading Hays County without question over those two years in taxes related to the citizens while still being able to finally look at projects like beautification.

"I couldn’t be happier, "Mitchell added, "I don’t know how we could do a better job at this point of presenting a budget that meets the needs of the community while simultaneously helping to provide tax relief. I think we often talk about those two items being in tension with each other. This is an incredible budget. It’s allowing us to do the impossible — provide both."

In other matters on the agenda last night:

• As expected, Tenorio pulled consideration of the revised Ethics Ordinance off the consent agenda and then announced her appointee to the Ethics Commission, Teresa Tobias, has resigned from the commission. Tobias is a member of the Hays CISD school board and one of the changes in the ethics ordinance forbid elected officials from serving on the Ethics Commission, although the council agreed to exempt Tobias from this provision until her term expired. Webster said additional changes to the ordinance were made on the advice of the city attorney. One prohibited people from suing the city, which Webster deemed unconstitutional and thus was removed from the proposed ordinance. Webster also said the city attorney agreed that a separate attorney, independent of the city attorney’s position, would provide legal counsel to the commission. The council then voted 6-1, with, as also expected, Tenorio dissenting, to adopt the ordinance.
• After revealing the council had, back in January, made a deal with the devil that permits garages on certain homes to project further than any other part of the front of a home (a concept Mitchell said he objected to then and voted against when offered as an amendment tonight) the council ultimately voted to adopt the so-called Design Guide as well.
• In its last decision of the evening (other than deciding to adjourn, of course) the council voted to indefinitely suspend consideration of an agenda item that would have called for another council position to be included on the Nov. 7 election. The council reasoned consideration was unnecessary because no additional council places were vacated.

IDEA charter school to open here in fall 2018

A spokesperson for IDEA Public Schools announced at last night’s City Council meeting it plans to open a charter school on Goforth Road, just a few hundred yards from I-35, in the fall of 2018 for students in kindergarten and first, second and sixth grades.

However, in conversations I had last night and again today with IDEA Executive Director Lankin Tackett, he insisted I can take the word "plans" out of the above sentence. He told me during both conversations the school will definitely open next year.

He also said students can begin registering to attend the school this fall simply by going to IDEA’s web site.

"It’s part of our mission to serve students who will be the first in their families to graduate from college," Tackett told the council. "Our mission is college for all. We just believe deeply in the possibility and the potential of every child. Regardless of their background, regardless of their ability level, we think they can go to college so that’s what we focus on."

This, of course, is in sharp contrast to what’s currently being offered in terms of college prep in Kyle. Lehman High School’s college readiness score, for example, is 21.9 out of 100, according to research conducted by U.S. News and World Report. The IDEA charter school in Brownsville, on the other hand, has a college readiness score of 90.8 and is ranked the 55^th best high school in the entire country, according to that same research.

That’s the reason the idea of a college prep charter school poses such a threat to council member Daphne Tenorio, a staunch defender of Lehman High School here and whose husband is a member of the Hays CISD board. Tenorio’s hands were tied at last night’s meeting, however, because to oppose the school outright would, in effect, place her in position of advocating for a reduced public educational product for her constituents. So she tried to attack the idea by questioning Mayor Todd’s Webster objectivity and the fact that the public hearing on the bond sale was held in downtown Austin and not Kyle. Neither argument gained any traction: Webster made public all his work as a pro-educational lobbyist in the Texas Legislature Tuesday immediately prior to the IDEA announcement, thus making his objectivity irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and the school’s bond representative explained the reason the meeting was held in Austin was that the majority of the proceeds from the sale of the bonds will be used for projects in Travis County. She told Tenorio a notice of the meeting was published, as required, in the Austin American-Statesman, which forced a frustrated Tenorio to make the startling admission that she never reads the daily newspaper that is the principle in-depth source of legislative, national and international news for persons in this area who wish to be informed on those subjects (and taxpayers should hope their council members would wish to remain informed on them). In the end that left Tenorio sputtering that the fact she chose not to read the publication that was required to carry the notice of the public hearing amounted to "a lack of transparency." Go figure.

Council member Shane Arabie, on the other hand, held a completely different view.

"My son is a product of a charter school education," he told Tackett. "I believe in the charter school system and I advocate for it highly. I’m extremely excited to have this in the area. I’m only saddened that my child won’t be able to participate in it, I welcome you with open arms and I want to thank you for bringing this opportunity to our area."

Tackett said the school has already purchased the land for the school and construction will be completed on the first of what will eventually become two buildings on the campus in time for the start of the 2018-19 school year. He said that building will house approximately 116 students in each of the grades with an eventual total enrollment of around 1,400. A lottery will be held if the total number of applicants exceeds that 116-per-grade figure and Tackett told me today there’s never been an instance in the nearly 17-year history of IDEA schools that a lottery wasn’t required when a new school opened.

Beginning with the 2019-20 school year, a third and seventh grade will be added and two new grades will be added each school year until ultimately the Kyle IDEA school serves pre-kindergarten through 12^th grades. The school will have two principals — on supervising the elementary grades and the other overseeing what Tackett called "the college prep" academy which includes grades 6-12.

Tackett said a second building will be constructed on the campus that will be exclusively for the college prep academy and it should be open by the 2020-21 school year.

In response to a question from council member Becky Selbera, Tackett said IDEA strives to hire teachers from the local area. "We want educators who know the community in which they’re working," he said. "We do a lot of training of our instructional leaders and principals. We have something called the Principals in Residence program where an IDEA principal has gone through a fellowship over a two-year period to get ready."

Not only was no council action required on the matter, there was really no reason for the item to even be on the council’s agenda except for Mayor Todd Webster desire to avoid any questions of impropriety because of his role as an educational advocate at the state government level. The IRS requires the mayor of each municipality directly affected by the proceeds from charter school bond sales sign a letter acknowledging that a public meeting was held to announce the intention to sell said bonds. Webster decided to use the formal setting of a council meeting to make public the fact that he had complied with this IRS regulation.

In addition last night:

• High-tech police equipment. The council decided the question was not whether the city manager should enter into negotiations to purchase new high-tech tools for the Kyle Police Department, but when those negotiations should take place. Police Chief Jeff Barnett wanted the negotiations to begin immediately, claiming the tools the police are currently using too time consuming even in those rare instances when they actually work as they as designed to do. Many city council members questioned whether this discussion is going to be seen as something related to the planned co-location of many police activities with other law-enforcement agencies in Hays County and whether the entire conversation should be postponed until discussions begin on the Fiscal Year 2017-18 budget. The contract would be for the purchase of tasers as well as body cameras and in-car video cameras along with the software needed to label, store and share the videos recorded on those cameras. But whether the negotiations are held now or during the budget discussion, there is really nothing at issue here until the city has a formal contract offer. The devil, as they say, are in the contract details. Here, according to The Motley Fool, is what Axom is trying to pull off: It provides up-front bargains in order to entice municipalities into what eventually become expensive long-term deals the cities can’t get out of. In an article just published Monday, The Motley Fool reported: "On April 5, Axon announced an offer for free body cameras for every police officer in the U.S. Even accounting for the fact that it was effectively an offer for officers who didn't already have an Axon body camera, it still amounts to a promise for a free product for around 1 million officers across the country. Not only will officers who accept this offer get a body camera, they'll also get a year of the unlimited pro licence to store data on Evidence.com, two mounts, a docking station, and access to the Axon online training library. To understand why Axon would offer a free body camera in the first place, we have to look at where the company makes its money. Axon is trying to get customers to buy a subscription to a suite of services that include the Evidence.com evidence management system and a body camera upgrade every two and a half years, and future add-ons like artificial intelligence and improved wireless services. … The beauty of the entire platform is that once a law enforcement agency and prosecutors begin using Axon's products, they'll likely be locked in. Video from body cameras can be used by prosecutors, while new technology allows officers to reduce paperwork by using body camera software. It would not be feasible to switch systems every year, because training costs would be high, so customers would renew their Axon subscriptions year after year." I have queried the city to learn whether it, or the police department, has a formal, written policy on the use of tasers and body cameras, but I don’t expect to receive a reply by the time I publish this article. If and when I do receive a reply, I will publish an update.
• Road bond updates. City Engineer Leon Barba told the council 85 percent of the work has been completed on the Goforth Road bond project and is scheduled to be completed by the end of next month; that a traffic signal "should begin flashing in two weeks or less" at the Goforth/Bunton intersection; "71 percent of the work has been completed" on the Bunton project between I-35 and Lehman and that it should be completely done by the end of September; a 150-foot segment of the Lehman Road Project that extends from the intersection with Bunton has been fast-tracked so that it will be completed by the time school starts Aug. 21; for the rest of the Lehman project, two easements still need to be acquired and utilities can’t be moved until those acquisitions are completed and that construction should begin, hopefully, the last quarter of this year with a 15-month construction schedule; four more parcels still need to be acquired before work can begin on Burleson and that an 18-month construction schedule will commence some time next year.
• Rail House wants its own water tower. Community Development Director Howard Koontz told the council that the new owners of the downtown Rail House restaurant want to install "a reasonably large and not in any way code compliant sign in front of their property." Koontz said the owners deliberately want the sign to be "conspicuous." He added "On the surface, we don’t have any means possible to permit it. It would be a large water tower and would have some writing on it that would basically advertise their property a little bit closer to the main intersection." The surprise in all of this to me was when Koontz revealed "The staff is actually supportive of the idea that they be able to put this sign up for the sake of it being an attraction downtown much like the signage in front of the Pie Company or anything else that can be talked about." Koontz said the only way to allow the sign, however, would be a text amendment "which would allow for staff to enable language to create a conditional use process for wayfinding and other types of landmark signage." Here’s the rub: this agenda item was listed as a presentation with no action scheduled to be taken. Yet Koontz asked the council to approve directing the staff to come up with such an amendment. The Rail House owners apparently want to use available city grant money to fund the project, an idea that did not seem to be well received by the mayor. "If the council agrees to do something like this, it needs to be things that actually contribute to the ROI of the property. In time it generates increased property values and increased property taxes. Things like signs and volleyball courts (which the Rail House also wants to install) I don’t think accomplish that." He also said making a sign exception for the Rail House could alienate other area business owners who would also like to see changes in the types of signs that are allowed. Council member Travis Mitchell said he definitely did not want to see a Cabella’s-type water tower in Kyle similar to the one that looms over Buda.
• Special council meeting scheduled. City Manager Scott Sellers announced a brief special City Council agenda meeting will need to be called for Wednesday, June 28, most likely at 8 a.m., to consider at least two items: An item that was postponed from last night’s agenda to accept the Woodlands Park, Phase 3 subdivision improvements and another involving a multi-family project scheduled for construction in Plum Creek that needed to be delayed months ago because of a required relocation of a wastewater line but must be approved before the end of the month in order for the developer to close financing on the deal.

Kyle may “Dexter” its government operations

I am not a big fan of episodic TV. I will watch a series via streaming or on disc after it has completed its first-run telecast if one is recommended to me by fellow members of the Writers Guild whose opinion I respect. I don’t "binge watch" as a lot of folks apparently do. Usually I watch a little less than episode per week. One of those series I’m currently watching — I’m about two-thirds of the way through Season 3 — is Dexter.

And, frankly, I am beginning to wonder why this one came with such a strong recommendation. It is a tad melodramatic for my tastes and it lays on the angst of the story’s titular character way too thickly. I will admit to admiring the audacity of creating a television series around a despicable human being — in this case, a serial killer — but Dexter is not the first TV series based on that premise: both The Sopranos and Breaking Bad handled that concept far more successfully than Dexter.

But the real problem I’m having with the program is that I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the show actually believes its main character is a "hero," a "good guy." It seems they are buying into their own false premise that it’s OK to murder your fellow human beings if, in the opinion of the murderer, the victims "deserved:" to be murdered because of some heinous crime they may have committed but escaped justice for. I have no idea how the series ends — and I don’t want anyone to spoil it by trying to tell me how it ends — but I’m going to be furious if this guy doesn’t get the punishment he deserves, i.e., a gruesome demise.

I mention this only because I want to pose the argument that it is inherently wrong for a city government to use public, taxpayers funds to repair private property. Stated like that, I think most people would agree with me. The City of Kyle, however, appears set to go all Dexter on that argument. Just as Dexter seems to be arguing its OK to diabolically, gruesomely murder another human being if the murderer feels the crime is justified , the city is prepared to make a similar exception to the "using taxpayer money to repair private property" rule when it applies to sidewalks.

It’s a dangerous precedent that simply doesn’t stand up to the arguments against it. However, of the six council members who attended last night’s City Council meeting (Mayor Pro Tem Damon Fogley missed last night’s meeting due to a death in his family), the only one who agrees with me on this is Shane Arabie.

I don’t have enough time or the energy to enumerate and elucidate on all the problems with this notion ventured during last night’s City Council meeting, but I will mention a few of them.

First of all, the council is lying. Well, perhaps, not really, but based on last night’s conversation most observers are going to walk away thinking the city is now willing to accept responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of all sidewalks in Kyle. And, going forward, if this hair-brained scheme is approved, that’s the message that the public will her and absorb. But that doesn’t appear to be what the city is planning on doing. What the council discussed last night was strictly a relatively inexpensive way to fix a sidewalk in certain situations, specifically one in which a crack in the sidewalk has caused the walkway on one side of the crack to be lower than the walkway on the other side. That’s it. If you’ve got a hole in the sidewalk, forget about it. It doesn’t appear the city is going to repair that. If a tree root has busted through the sidewalk, effectively splitting it in two with a space between the two sections, I don’t think the city plans on coming to your rescue there either. What the city is actually planning, according to council member David Wilson, is contracting with a private company that will inject a polymer under one side of a sidewalk to elevate that side and make it even with the other side. That’s it. The cost will depend on the number of inches one side needs to be raised, i.e., how much polymer is required.

Now Wilson said the city has identified 270 instances in Kyle that could use this type of repair and the decision the council needs to make at some future date is whether to budget the money needed to make these 270 repairs over a five-year period. Which raises even more concerns that I will address momentarily.

But let’s get back to my original problem. The public is going to perceive that the city is going to be repairing and maintaining all sidewalks and that doesn’t appear to be true: it only plans on leveling those 270 sidewalk locations and even that will take place at what appears to me to be the incredibly slow pace of one sidewalk leveling repair per week over a five-year period. So what happens when some homeowner sees the city repairing a sidewalk across the street, but then learns the sidewalk repairs he needs are not leveling, but, say replacing? How is that homeowner going to react?

Like I said, it’s a slippery slope, a dangerous precedent.

If a homeowner carefully examines the deed for his/her property, that homeowner will see the front of the property line extends to, at least, the curb of the street on which the property fronts. That means the sidewalk is on private property and thus is the responsibility of the owner of that private property. "But," council member Travis Mitchell argued after last night’s meeting," that sidewalk is a public right-of-way and the homeowner doesn’t have the right to remove it," True, but neither does the homeowner have the right to remove all the landscaping from the property and just pave it all over to avoid landscaping time and costs. However, under the city’s new sidewalk rule, if the fact that a homeowner can’t remove a sidewalk is to be used as justification for the city to make and pay for (certain) repairs to that sidewalk, doesn’t that mean the city can he held responsible for maintaining the property’s landscaping as well? If Code Compliance can cite a homeowner for, say, overgrown weeds, and order that homeowner to fix the problem, why not simply have Code Compliance site the homeowner for needed sidewalk repairs as well?

Now the city will claim that the reason it is getting this great price break for the repairs is because of the amount of such repairs that is required in the city is such a high number and individually those numbers would not work for the contractor at that reduced price. Bull-pucky. If the city cited a homeowner and the citation noted that the homeowner had one year to repair the deficiency or would be subject to a fine greater than the actual cost of the repair, the homeowner would most likely not only contract to get the job done but possibly even thank the city for finding a company that could make the repair at such a reasonable price. Not only that, the repair could be made within a year and the homeowner wouldn’t have to gamble on whether his address in the city’s lottery would be at the beginning or at the end of a five-year period. That means the company gets five times the volume of business in one year than it would under the city’s plan.

The reality here is the city wants to Dexter the sidewalk issue: "Yes," the city will argue, "it is wrong to use taxpayers funds to pay for repairs on private property, but when it comes to sidewalks we’re going to find a way to justify it." It’s not right, but it’s politically expedient (until the public finds out it isn’t entirely true).

Here’s another fallacy in Mitchell’s "public right-of-way" argument. Suppose a water pipe located beneath the foundation of my house breaks resulting in a major water leak. Whose responsibility is it to fix this? Technically, that water is not my property. It haven’t "purchased" it from the city until it flows into my hot water heater or I turn on the faucet or flush the toilet and it actually enters my home. The answer, however, is obviously it’s the homeowner’s responsibility to pay for the excavation, perhaps though the home’s foundation, and repair of that water line. But if the city is now going to assume responsibility for maintaining certain items of private property, what’s to prevent some hotshot legal mind from deducing it sets a precedent that covers all such repairs, including those that involve the delivery of any city service, i.e. water? Certain responsible city governments do assume a limited amount of liability in matters such as these. I realized I faced a potential major water leek under my home in Dallas when, for two straight months, my monthly water bill, which normally averaged a little more than $100 a month, was close to $500. After I arranged for and paid for the needed repairs (which resulted in a major hole having to be drilled and later refilled in my kitchen floor), the City of Dallas had a plan which allowed me to take the two $500 water invoices (which I had also paid — I didn’t want my water turned off) along with invoices from those same two months the year before, to Dallas Water Utilities which then credited me with the difference. I didn’t have to pay for water again for almost a year. But it didn’t assume responsibility for fixing the leak. In fact, Dallas, like the overwhelming majority of city governments in this country, doesn’t use taxpayer funds to pay for any repairs on private property, including sidewalk repairs.

To his credit, Arabie disagreed with this entire Dexter approach on both a practical and a philosophical level. But, unfortunately, he was the only one with the courage to do the right thing and not to bend in the political winds.

On the practical side he questioned "What is the life span of the poly-fill? What is the longevity of the poly-fill? What’s the weight-load capacity of poly-fill? What are we going to do if we have problems later on. I have a problem with all of those." And then he asked the pertinent question I addressed earlier: "What are the percentages of the sidewalks that will be fixed with the poly-fill.?" And if the city decides it needs to fulfill the promise it appears, on the surface, to be making and that is to assume all responsibility for sidewalk maintenance and repair, Arabie wanted to know "What are the percentage of sidewalks that will be fixed with conventional methods? How many miles are we going to fix? How much tax dollars are we going to appropriate towards this?"

Then he made what I believed is the concluding argument: "If we’re going to consider this, then it’s going to be a policy that we’re going to fix the sidewalks. So what’s the policy standard we’re going to fix them to? The reality is, this idea doesn’t fix all of our (sidewalk) issues. The soil will still flex and still move. We’re still going to have problems with sidewalks. The policy decision that needs to be made is whether we’re going to assume responsibility to fix the sidewalks. That’s the policy decision, not what we’re going to pay for. So I don’t necessarily agree with the way we’re moving forward right now."

After the meeting, I posed the more philosophical side of the question is Arabie and he replied "I vehemently oppose using taxpayer funds to repair any private property."

So there’s that, as well.

In other matters worth noting from last night’s City Council meeting:

• The city appeared to be leaning in favor of spreading over a 30-year period, not 20 years. Kyle’s $60.1 million share of the total cost of the Hayes Caldwell Public Utility Agency’s project to transport water from the Carrizo aquifer to local customers, even though Mitchell, noting a 20-year option would save taxpayers $21.3 million in interest payments, argued for the shorter time span. The reason given for the longer period is that would allow for additional customers moving into the area during years 21-30 to share in the pain of having to repay the note. City Finance Director Perwez Moheet estimated the average water customer could see as much as a 42 to 50 percent water bill increase under the 30-year plan, although Mayer Todd Webster said some of the debt could be repaid from available moneys in the General Fund. "There was a time not that long ago when the city hadn’t adequately planned for water" and the result was "we didn’t have water," Webster noted. "I went through the experience of trying to turn the faucet on and the water didn’t work. A number of times. And that was one of the two things that prompted me to get involved and be part of the solution. That solution grew into and became a regional collaborative to try to bring water to the region and that’ has evolved into the HCPUA And Kyle was actually the prime mover and the ones that initiated the thing." Webster acknowledged residents will suffer sticker shock when they see the effects the three proposed bond sales ($8.99 million this year, $24.19 million two years from now and $26.92 million in 2021) will have on their water bills "but I can assure you the cost of not doing something is far more than this." The city did not officially make any decisions on this issue — it really didn’t even give city staff a clear direction on how to pursue the matter — but the overall impression I got was the majority of the council is leaning in favor of financing the project over 30, not 20, years.
• The council voted to create a PID in the Blanco River Ranch Development project, a decision that was little more than a formality since the PID had already been part of a previously negotiated Development Agreement.
• On a 3-3 vote on a motion to approve it, council members initially failed to OK the rezoning of a subdivision in far east Kyle that would have increased its density to the maximum allowable. However, Mitchell, who not only voted against the motion, but forced a change in the mid-term update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan because of his opposition to high-density projects on the city’s borders, sought and won a reconsideration of the vote. His subsequent motion to table discussion on the issue due to Fogley’s absence last night was approved 4-2 with Arabie and council member Daphne Tenorio, who both joined Mitchell in opposition of the original motion, voting against the delay.
• On another zoning issue, the council affirmed its decision last month to defy the Planning & Zoning Commission’s recommendation and voted to rezone a half-acre of land at 1408 W. Center Street from Construction Manufacturing to Community Commercial. P&Z had recommended a more restrictive zoning.
• The council passed on a 5-1 vote the final reading the mid-term amendments to that 2010 Comprehensive Plan. Tenorio cast the one opposing vote. She failed to give a reason for voting no, but, according to last week’s edition of the Hays Free Press she opposed its passage because she felt there had not been enough public input into the plan, which, in true Tenorio fashion, is her way of blaming others for her own shortcomings. She (and the rest of her colleagues on the council as well) needs to realize that the main, direct link between the voters and the city are the members of the City Council, not the city staff. Voters don’t elect the city manager, or the city’s chief of staff or the communications director; only the mayor and the council members. It is the council members’ responsibility to absorb the wishes of their constituents into their service and decisions on the council. During the almost two-year period this update was in the works Tenorio failed to schedule even one town hall meeting on the subject. Admittedly, none of her other colleagues did either, but they also did not achieve Tenorio’s level of duplicity by voting against the document, supposedly because of lack of public input, a situation she had the power and the authority to rectify if she really wanted to, if it really was that important for her. But once again Tenorio proved she is not interest in substance, only in posturing. I will have more to say on this subject in a later post.
• The council held a 52-minute executive session which was incredibly brief since the session’s agenda called for engaging in negotiations on eight different economic development projects. After the session, I asked the mayor if he could tell me, without divulging confidential information, if any of these projects were major job creators. "I think so," he replied. "Certainly by our standards. Any of them individually and all of them together will have a substantial economic impact. Without getting into details, which I can’t obviously, I will say I am very excited about these opportunities and they are just opportunities — nothing’s done. What the volume of these opportunities means is that all of our investment in infrastructure and capacity building and getting things straightened out here are starting to pay off now. Regardless of whether any of these come through there’s going to be dozens more. Regardless of the outcome of these negotiations, I feel optimistic. It affirms all the work that’s gone into the city’s increasing the ability to accommodate these kinds of things. It hasn’t paid off yet because we haven’t got there, but it’s a sign that the corner’s been turned."

“There was a big mistake made somewhere”

Admitting the city was "culpable" in a massive governmental bureaucratic kerfuffle that resulted in a local corporation facing a major overdue tax bill, the City Council took action Tuesday night to correct the situation, thus paving the way for a possible addition of 82 new professional jobs in Kyle, and then later passed a series of measures that could result in the location of a linen-cleaning business in North Kyle that could mean another 223 new jobs.

Put your abacus away. It works out to a total of 305 new jobs in one meeting. That’s a significant shot of economic adrenalin. But it did not come easy and it did not come without some serious soul searching from one city council member.

The "bureaucratic kerfuffle" I referred to above concerns RSI which set up shop in Kyle in 2007 on land that was owned by the city. That land was, in the words of City Manager Scott Sellers, "transitioned" from the city to RSI in 2011.

"When the property transitioned to RSI’s ownership in 2011, they reached out through their annual tax process with their CPA to pay the tax obligation to the local tax entities on the real property," Sellers told the council. "At the time they were told by the county, also probably by the city, there was indeed no tax obligation for the real property due at that time."

The same thing happened in 2012, 2013 and 2014. RSI kept asking about its tax bill and were told by the county it didn’t have a tax bill. But this year, Sellers said, the city "uncovered" the fact that, indeed, RSI not only had a tax bill for 2015 but actually owed back taxes from 2011 through to the present.

"We immediately notified Hays County and verified that a mistake had been made," Sellers said.

On its end, RSI has been bidding on large contracts that involved a significant research and development investment. "Because of that, RSI was not able to pay the full burden of the property tax they were faced with and appealed to the city for assistance," Sellers said.

Sellers indicated that during the last eight months, the city has been in meetings with Hays County to see if the back taxes could just be forgiven, since RSI was pretty much blameless in the whole mess. Sellers said the two parties could not find a way legally to do that. "The tax note, statutorily, would be due," he said. "So we tried to find a way to assist the company to remain viable with its tax note looming." Together with the Greater San Marcos Partnership, he said, they looked at "a job creation and retention incentive for the company."

RSI is bidding on a number of large contracts and if it lands any one of them it could mean a significant number of new jobs. However, RSI has facilities in many other locations and there was no guarantee those jobs would come to Kyle. So, to convince RSI to locate those 82 jobs here over the next 10 years, the county and the city have each pledged $123,000 for an incentive package.

"So what we are looking at tonight is an incentive package, combined with a direct loan to the company," Sellers said. "RSI will agree to pay the 2015 tax obligation. The additional tax obligation, while being paid by RSI, there is going to be a loan made by the city to the company. There will be a $123,000 commitment up-front from the City of Kyle, which equals $1,500 per job over the next 10 years. Hays County will match that $123,000. The incentive states that at the end of each fiscal year, the city will sit down, audit the number of jobs and insure a correct pro-rata of jobs have been created for the year. If not, the incentive is returned.

"There is also a $234,000 up front loan also being proposed as part of this package that would be an interest-free loan, payable beginning 2018 for 10 years," the city manager added.

Mayor Todd Webster acknowledged to Sellers the city "shared culpability for this error. There was some confusion around the (2010) transition of administrations from the (Tom ) Mattis period into the (Lanny) Lambert era, where there were things that just didn’t get picked up. There was the Bunton Creek PID issue and this is very much like that. But my sense is that the city bears some responsibility for the mistake. It’s not clear how such a big mistake occurred but the fact is it went on long enough that we could have lost one of the most important members of our business community. That led to me hoping you guys could come up with something to try to salvage this situation. There was a big mistake made somewhere. Whose mistake it was doesn’t matter, but I’m appreciative of the work you have done to figure out how to solve it."

Council member Travis Mitchell, who arguably had more hands-on responsibility for shaping the final agreement than any other council member, said the deal contained "three layers."

"One is an existing tax obligation," he said. "Not a tax obligation from the past, but a current bill that is now due that recognizes previous taxes were not properly billed to the employer. That’s different than saying they were billed and they chose not to pay. The second layer to it is who’s responsible. No business owner can escape culpability in that situation. However, we do have documented evidence that the property owner did try to pay the property taxes, did inquire multiple times through the years about paying those taxes and were told there was not a bill. That is an error. He did have a bill, but it was not properly given to him. The way I see it culpability lies on behalf of the business owner to know better and on the city and the county for making the error in the first place. The third layer is the incentive that’s on top of the first two issues and that incentive is our opportunity to make some of this right without putting the business in a very difficult position"

Mitchell said the ultimate result is that "RSI is getting a very small incentive to double in size in our target market with the best sector jobs that we can hope for in this town. They are also being forced to repay those taxes but are not having to do it lump sum right up front which no business of that size could afford."

The motion to pass the measure passed 5-1 on a roll call vote (council member David Wilson was out of town) with council member Daphne Tenorio casting the one dissenting vote. When council member Shane Arabie’s name was called during the vote, he paused for a considerable length of time before voting in favor of the deal. After the meeting I asked him about the pause and he told me "We’ve been negotiating for nine months and at the end the deal changed and it became something I didn’t necessarily agree with. I agree with economic development incentives, but I didn’t agree with the way it went at the end, the loan portion. I don’t agree with an up-front loan. I don’t believe we should be in the business of loaning money." In the end, however, he said he felt the positives — 82 new jobs — outweighed the negatives.

The vote came after an hour and 54-minute executive session that came at the beginning of the meeting, right after the citizen comments period. Council member Becky Selberra slipped out of the meeting shortly after the vote was taken at around 9:40 p.m., which is the reason all the subsequent votes totaled five.

The second economic development proposal involved the location of an approximately 20,000-square-foot-plus linen cleaning facility planned for the business park being developed across Kohler’s Crossing from the Home Depot. The four items on the agenda covering this project, each of which the council passed unanimously, provided for the application of a $1 million grant that would be used for the construction of a wastewater pipeline to service the facility.

In other action Tuesday night, the council:

• Received a progress report on all five road bond projects that I will write more about tomorrow after I get some much-needed sleep.
• Asked Police Chief Jeff Barnett to rethink his idea of renewing a lease on three Harley-Davidson motorcycles to determine (1) whether it would be more prudent economically to purchase and not lease, and (2) whether Harley-Davidson is really the best brand option.
• Unanimously passed on first reading amendments to those sections of the city’s code that have to do with impervious surfaces after determining that cement swimming pools are not impervious. The most interesting thing about the discussion on this issue, however, was the prediction from Mayor Webster that "sometime down the road," residential stormwater fees will be determined by the amount of impervious surface on a resident’s property.
• Unanimously passed on first reading amendments to the landscape ordinance.
• Unanimously passed on first reading an ordinance that would more equitably distribute the costs of constructing water and wastewater systems among various developers.
• Voted 4-1 (Tenorio voting "no") to contribute $10,000 to pay the city’s share for a study to determine the feasibility of constructing a regional wastewater treatment plant somewhere in the Blanco River basin.
• Unanimously approved an agreement to provide retail water and wastewater services to the Anthem Development.
• Adjourned at 11:26 p.m.

Council votes to increase proposed stormwater fee, raise police pay, eliminate transportation subsidies

At the end of the council’s nearly two-hour discussion Wednesday night on changes individual council members wanted to make to City Manager Scott Sellers’s proposed budget, Mayor Todd Webster congratulated Sellers on the document he put forward.

Webster told Sellers this was a more difficult budget to amend "because you guys did such a goof job of paring it down. There weren’t any big targets out there, things that we didn’t need. I recognized that sitting there watching us mess around with the edges of your budget might not be the most comfortable thing but I really think you did a nice job and your staff did a nice job. You could see that this budget was really well thought out."

Apparently the rest of the city agreed with the mayor on this because Wednesday night’s meeting was the first of two opportunities for citizens to come before the council to vent about how their tax funds are being spent and whether they are receiving the proper amount of city services for the tax money they must shell out each year — this was the open invitation for any citizen to come before the council and proclaim "I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!!!!" — and you know what happened? Not a soul showed up. No one. There were two public hearings scheduled on the agenda. The first one offered citizens the opportunity to say anything they wanted to say about the budget, about the idea of creating a stormwater utility along with a proposed fee to pay for it, about whether a penny should be added to the city manager’s proposed tax rate to align the city’s police pay scale with surrounding communities, whether to keep subsidizing rides on Buda Taxi. The second one offered the citizens the opportunity to say anything about the proposed property tax rate — higher, lower, stay where it is — anything at all. But no one came. This signals either (a) a completely satisfied community or (b) a completely disengaged community. I’m not going to argue which, at least not at this time.

Of course, there’s another opportunity to collect citizen imput on these matters some may find important. Two more public hearings — just like these — are scheduled for next Wednesday’s City Council meeting. It will be interesting to see how many, if any, citizens show up just to talk about the changes the council made to the budget at this meeting.

One thing I don’t expect to change, however, and that’s the city manager’s recommendation to set the tax rate at $.5748 per $100 valuation, a penny less than the current rate. The last time the council met to discuss the budget was July 30 at a workshop designed just for that purpose. At that time, however, the Hays County Appraisal District had not released its certified tax rolls. So the city was putting forth educated guesses on how much revenue a $.5748 tax rate would produce. The Kyle Police Association argued it was not high enough for its members to achieve pay parity with surrounding police forces and asked that the tax rate be kept at $.5848 with the extra $200,000 that one-cent increase would produce be devoted to police pay parity.

Now, however, the city has those certified roles and the property appraisals exceeded their most grandiose expectations. In fact, lowering the rate a penny to $.5748 would produce $518,000 more than the original forecasts. So, Sellers suggested, the council could take $200,000 of that for the parity the police were asking for, another $118,000 for provide pay increases for workers not covered by civil service and still have a nice $200,000 to tuck away for that proverbial rainy day. But as everyone has no doubt noticed, we’ve been having those rainy days this week, so the council found ways to spend most of that $200,000 between the rainstorms on Wednesday. Council member Shane Arabie asked for half of that amount fo pay for two additional wastewater employees and Mayor Pro Tem Damon Fogley got his wish for $25,000 to pay for a rescue boat for the Fire Department.

Other than police pay, the most noteworthy budget amendments were one from council member Travis Mitchell to raise the proposed stormwater fees paid by homeowners from $3 to $5 a month and one from Webster to eliminate the city’s subsidizing of taxi services. Mitchell’s proposal passed 6-1 with only council member Daphne Tenorio voting against, which seemed to be a 180-degree turn from what she was saying on this same subject during the July 30 budget workshop. The vote to eliminate the taxi subsidies was 5-2 with Fogley joining Tenorio in favor of maintaining the subsidies. The important thing to remember here is that taxi service from Buda Taxi will still be available to citizens of Kyle (as are other ride-sharing options). The only difference is the city won’t be subsidizing the service, meaning those using Buda Taxi could be subject to higher fares.

Webster said normally he wouldn’t quibble about a program that’s only going to cost the city $10,000 during the upcoming fiscal year ($50,000 was allocated for it currently) "but there’s definitely been sabers being rattled about lawsuits related to that program and a program that essentially only serves eight people I’m not willing to expose the city to litigation over it. It’s less about the $10,000, but more about we’re doing something that’s walking us down a path that’s going to get us into some trouble."

No one really mentioned the over-arching problem with this program. Municipally subsidized public transportation programs have one — only one — primary goal: to provide a transportation option for citizens to travel from their place of residence to their place of employment and then back to their place of residence. Sure, other riders use it for other purposes, but that goal – getting people to and from work – is the primary reason for a municipality providing a public mass transportation option. That’s why there are well-established formulas to determine whether a city actually needs mass transportation and those formulas are based on two factors: residential density and job density. And, to be honest, Kyle meets neither of those two criteria. And none of the up to eight total users of the city’s subsidized service was using it to get to and from work. They were using it for shopping or to go to a medical provider. Not that either of those reasons are trivial to the person needing them, but they do not meet the standard of providing taxpayer subsidized service.

In other action Wednesday night:

• The fire chief, albeit unwittingly, asked the council do something illegal and that’s take sides on a matter going before the electorate. The chief asked the council to pass a resolution encouraging a "yes" vote to create an EMS district. City Councils are not even allowed to pass resolutions encouraging "yes" votes on their own bond proposals.
• The council approved a development agreement with the Walton Group for a proposed, predominantly residential, development just southeast of the Kyle City Limits on Ranch Road 150 called Pecan Woods. The council also approved the creation of a PID for the project so that bonds could be sold to repay the developers for their infrastructure investment. Arabie voted against both measures because the developers failed to assure him the development would actually happen. Tenorio also voted against, but she has vowed never to vote in favor of a PID until ice skating becomes a regular feature on Plum Creek in August. And maybe, not even then.
• Reconsidered a decision, that was voted down 3-2 at the last council meeting, to join the Central Texas Clean Air Coalition because two council members were absent at that meeting. Those two council members split on their vote Wednesday night and, as a result, this time the vote was 4-3 not to join. It appeared to me going into the debate that Fogley was in favor of joining, but wound up voting against. I didn’t take advantage of an opportunity to ask him why — or even if he actually did — change his mind, but if he did, I’m guessing it had a lot to do with Sellers’s revelation that the deadline had passed between the last council meeting and this one for applying for a grant that city had a slim chance of obtaining had they joined the coalition.
• Sellers told the council that Kyle Field Days, originally scheduled for next month, will be delayed until spring, mainly because the city’s special events guru has left the city and a replacement has yet to be hired. This postponement, Sellers said, "will give us a little more time to work on it as well as advertise appropriately. The other evens that are being planned (presumably Hogwash) are being planned well. We’re seeing good numbers for those right now, but Kyle Field Day, which is coming up pretty quickly, we’re not."
• Sellers also told the council "We are systematically upgrading our street signs throughout the city, starting with Center Street. So, if you noticed, as you drove in, instead of the typical green sign, you will see a very sharp red and blue sign. It’s attractive. We’re going to try to match our wayfinding and adopt-a-street signage after the same color scheme. We may even look at doing some backlit signage on some of our signal-light intersections, trying to preserve the same color scheme. A little bit of branding and it looks sharp."