Groundbreaking planned for public safety center

Proposed public safety center — “the most unique and the best building that Kyle has ever built.” 

Ten days after the City Council voted unanimously, in spite of concerns raised by member Yvonne Flores-Cale, to spend $30 million and change to build a new public safety center, the city will be holding groundbreaking ceremonies at the Kohlers Crossing site of the new structure.

The $30,139,839 “not-to-exceed” contract awarded by the council Tuesday to Bartlett Cocke General Contractors is significantly less than the $37 million voters approved last November in a bond election for the purpose of “planning, designing, constructing, improving and equipping of a public safety facility.”

Flores-Cale’s objections revolved around the fact that, according to the plans for the building approved by the council’s vote, approximately a fourth of the first floor and more than half of the second floor of the proposed building will be set aside for use by city staff members who are not part of the police department. For all practical purposes, at least a third of the public safety center will actually be overflow from city hall.

“The police department deserves better,” Flores-Cale said. “They deserve to have a building that is a hundred percent their own.”

College Station's police facility

She said the city should have followed its original plans to copy the police headquarters in College Station “because that was something our officers liked.”

“So to go in there and take a third of it or 22,000 square feet and dedicate it for city staff I think is irresponsible,” she said. “Now it’s even going to be more money when staff leaves. It’s going to cost the taxpayers more to rebuild that building the way it was originally supposed to be.”

Council member Robert Rizo countered “This building was approved by voters as a public safety center, not just a police department. We picked a bigger building (than College Station’s) so we could alleviate two needs that we have in our city and eventually the police department will incorporate the entire building.”

“The reason I would not want to use the exact same College Station plans is because we knew from the start we wanted to modify something that was out there for Kyle and Kyle’s needs,” council member Dex Ellison said. “We’re not College Station. We’re not that same community. We wanted to provide a public safety center that was unique to Kyle and the needs that our police department has.”

Ellison said the center will be “a modern and unique and advanced building that will last for decades to come … It will be the most unique and the best building that Kyle has ever built.”

Mayor Travis Mitchell said he was “humbled and proud” to vote for the contract.

“I can imagine (the center) will become more and more a part of our recruitment (for new police officers),” Mitchell said. “We want the best officers and that’s a big part of what this is designed to bring to us.”

“It’s a very exciting time and I am very excited to see this building finally go up,” Captain Pedro Hernandez, a 25-year veteran of the Kyle Police Department, told the council. “It’s a long time coming. I am excited. It’s going to be the best looking building in Hays County. I am confident of that.”

The groundbreaking ceremonies will take place a week from today from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at 1760 Kohlers Crossing, the city said Thursday in an official announcement. Parking will be available on Marketplace Avenue.

Suppose they held a city council meeting and nobody came

 Only three council members, two in person, showed up Wednesday night to attend the city council agenda meeting recessed from the night before, so the meeting was immediately adjourned for lack of a quorum. No word yet on when the eight items that were not taken up at Tuesday’s meeting would be considered.

District 6 council member Michael Tobias, who made the recommendation Tuesday night to resume the meeting Wednesday and whose last words on the dias Tuesday were “I can be available” for a Wednesday meeting was one of those who failed to appear.

Council members Robert Rizzo and Dex Ellison were on the dias Wednesday night and Yvonne Flores-Cale checked in remotely.

Those items that failed to be considered included the annexations of 2.548 acres located at 4750 Dacy Lane and 37.99 acres of the so-called “Caraway Tract” at 301 Bebee Road (although a request to indefinitely table this requested annexation was filed by a representative of the applicant); a request for a Comprehensive Plan amendment to add warehouse and construction manufacturing zoning districts to the Regional Node land use district in the Comprehensive Plan; a request from the Southlake Ranch homeowners association to remove no parking signs on Granite Shoals Drive; and the possible creation of a Human Services Board/Commission “to review, advise, and create an equitable and fair process for allocating grant funding to non-profits organizations serving in the Kyle area.”

COVID concerns force council to cancel balloon festival

The City Council emerged from an executive session that came at the end of a nearly five-hour meeting Tuesday night and voted 6-1 to cancel the Labor Day weekend Pie in the Sky festival over concerns surrounding the rising number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the area.

Council member Ashlee Bradshaw cast the lone dissenting vote.

“Pie in the Sky contracts” were listed as one subject of the executive session under the heading “Pending or contemplated litigation or to seek the advice of the City Attorney.” Thus it must be assumed that not only did the council learn that many vendors and balloon participants were pulling out the festival, but also that the city attorney probably advised the council of potential legal liability in the very real possibility that the festival turned into a COVID super-spreader event.

“With the current situation that is going on in our city and for the safety and well-being of our residents and the city staff and everyone involved, with a heavy heart I want to make the motion and the recommendation that we cancel this year’s Pie in the Sky festival for 2021,” council member Michael Tobias said.

“This is one of the hardest votes I have to take,” said council member Robert Rizo, who seconded Tobias’ motion, “because I really wanted to see us get past the pandemic and see us getting our lives back. For us to be in the situation we are right now is very depressing and very sad.”

A prepared statement from the city, issued today, added: “COVID-19 has impacted nearly every piece of event planning from staffing and volunteers to availability of vendors and supplies. City leadership has also kept a close eye on local COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations and ultimately wanted to avoid contributing to an already strained healthcare system. With the continued increase in active cases in the area, specifically the Delta Variant, the city anticipates these challenges will only continue and become increasingly more difficult. Refunds will be issued to all vendors and ticket purchasers.”

Budget amendment cements fitness court location

The east side versus west side debate over the location of a proposed outdoor fitness court appears over, courtesy of a budget amendment presented today by City Manager Scott Sellers, with the staff-recommended Marketplace Avenue site emerging victorious over Steeplechase Park.

The amendment, one of nine Sellers outlined to the city council during its morning budget workshop, adds $130,000 to the list of CIP expenses for the court, $25,000 of which will come from a grant awarded the city from the National Fitness Campaign, with the remainder being paid for, according to Sellers’s presentation, from a “future PID bond reimbursement to the city.” That essentially means, when all is said and done, all taxpayer funds spent on the construction of the court will be reimbursed by a private developer, so there’s a net zero cost to the city. 

At least two council members, Mayor Travis Mitchell and Robert Rizo, wanted the court at Steeplechase Park, but only if city funds were going to be used for its construction. The staff recommended the west side site, located on the east side of Marketplace between the Burleson Road roundabout and Plum Creek, because of its central location, no park facilities currently exist there, and existing trees on the property offer shade for the court.

The other budget amendments of note Sellers presented to the council today included a $100,000 contribution that would go toward a “senior center project,” and $2.17 million for a sludge de-watering press system that reduces the amount of sludge that needs to be hauled away from the wastewater treatment plant. Sellers reminded council that the city uses private contractors to haul the sludge, but  this method is rapidly becoming cost prohibitive and the city is considering bringing this task in-house.

The other amendments were:

• $415,000 for site-specific beautification improvement projects
• $78,432 for a senior planner position for the Community Development Department
• $20,000 for DPS laboratory services for the Police Department
• $20,000 for consultant services for the Economic Development Department
• $12,610 to change the parks crew leader position to a parks and trails supervisor
• $5,280 for a 4 percent co-location cost increase for the Police Department

Three volunteer to study possible city arts commission

Three city council members – Dex Ellison, Yvonne Flores Cale and Robert Rizo — sorta, kinda volunteered themselves and/or each other Tuesday to serve on a task force with City Manager Scott Sellers and Library Director Paul Phelan to study the idea of creating a city “Arts Commission.”

Originally, city staff envisioned the creation of a seven-member Arts Commission that would include six artists or arts patrons, each representing a separate artistic category, and one council member. When council members couldn’t agree on, among other things, whether commission members should be Kyle residents (questioning, for instance, whether there were enough experts in the field of “plastic arts” living in Kyle to complete the commission) or whether more than one council person should be on the commission, the idea came up for this task force that will be “tasked” with addressing those concerns. It should be noted, however, all seven city council members seemed to enthusiastically embrace the need for more “art in the city.”

The six categories staff proposed to be represented on the commission were literature, visual arts, graphic arts, plastic arts, decorative arts and performing arts. 

“Obsessed” mayor leads council approval of roundabout ordinance

Mayor Travis Mitchell admitted he’s so “obsessed” with roundabouts that he has flown drones in order to videotape and then study them. Council member Yvonne-Flores Cale claimed to be a roundabout convert and her fellow council member Robert Rizo said he’s “leaning” that way. Their colleague, Michael Tobias, confessed he doesn’t like ‘em and he never will. And, when all was said and done, the city council voted 6-1 Tuesday to approve on first reading an ordinance that will (1) make roundabouts more prolific in the city and (2) give the city’s staff more control over roundabouts installed by developers.

And in case anyone on the near west side of the Interstate is listening, City Engineer Leon Barba said officially during the council’s roundabout discussion that too many obstacles exist to build a rumored roundabout at the Burleson-Spring Branch intersection and that, instead, traffic signals likely will be installed there.

“This (ordinance) will allow us to adapt the national standards that we have been trying to put together for the last year,” Barba said. “The guidelines we have adopted are very comprehensive. They have a lot of good information in there and we expect all future roundabouts to be designed in accordance with this and whatever future revisions are made to this standard.

“It doesn’t require all intersections to be roundabouts,” Barba said in response to a question Mitchell posed. “It gives us the opportunity to look at the subdivisions as they are coming in very carefully to determine where we are going to need a roundabout or where we believe we are going to need a roundabout and it gives us authority to do that and go through that process.”

“Everybody knows how I feel about these,” Tobias said. “I did some research today about the pros and cons and in most cases it improves traffic. It’s just that in our climate here, it’s the speed that these people drive through. The concern that I have is the roundabout that could be right at the intersections of schools where you have pedestrian walkways. You also have the speed of the traffic on some of these roads to go from 50 miles an hour to a roundabout where you have to go 15 or 20. I’m also looking at the emergency vehicles that have to go through there. Those are the big concerns that I have when we start looking at roundabouts throughout the city.”

After saying roundabouts are safer than other intersections because they eliminate broadside collisions, Barba admitted “they do take a lot of right-of-way. You don’t want to be taking out houses to put in a roundabout.”

“I was a fan of roundabouts in 2016 when I started seeing some roundabouts go in,” the mayor said. “I watch our roundabouts carefully. I’ve gone and sat at intersections. I’ve drone-videoed intersections. I’ve looked at intersections I thought needed roundabouts. I am obsessed. I’ve only quadrupled or more my belief that as long as it is the appropriate engineering and at the right intersection, I’d give my left arm to see a roundabout.”

Mitchell specifically cited the intersection of “Spring Branch and Veterans,” although I assume he was referring to the Silverado/Veterans intersection, where, he said, “that stop sign backs up traffic forever and ever. I’ve drone videoed that intersection and about one out of every four vehicles runs that stop sign. Some people just drive through it and never slow down. So I want ‘em.”

“I’ve never been a big fan of roundabouts,” Rizo said. “I kinda hate ‘em. But what I hate worse is what the mayor just touched on. I’ve seen this become a pattern here in Kyle and that’s people running stop signs. I had a gentleman the other day in a blue Ford pickup who ran five stop signs near the downtown area and I didn’t appreciate it because he almost hit me as well. What concerns me is what if there’s a family walking across the street? Little-by-little, peoples’ bad habits are leaning me towards roundabouts.”

“I did not like roundabouts either,” Flores-Cale said. “And when the Burleson one came, it was a game-changer. So now I am Team Roundabout. I feel like I’m a traitor to myself and to the people I told that I hated roundabouts. But I only take Burleson now when I go to the H-E-B. As someone who did not initially support a roundabout — who despised it — I have to say ‘I love it.’ If they’re made right, they can benefit the city.”

Council approves 15th holiday for city workers

 After debating whether Kyle should become one of the 3 percent of Texas cities who offer their employees as many as 15 paid holidays, the city council voted unanimously Tuesday night to join Galveston and Austin in adding Juneteenth to the list of official holidays for city employees.

Galveston, the city in which on June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived on the shores of Texas and told the enslaved people they were free, actually declared the date a city holiday the week before President Joe Biden officially declared the date a federal holiday.

Kyle council member Dex Ellison proposed the holiday idea here, but it was one of his colleagues, Yvonne Flores-Cale, who became its most vocal proponent. Mayor Travis Mitchell suggested it might be preferable to substitute Juneteenth for another holiday already on the city’s calendar. City staff currently have 12 paid holidays that correspond with recognized federal holidays, plus two “floating” days they may take off.

“The question is not whether we should support Juneteenth as a city holiday,” Mitchell said during a discussion in which all decorum was abandoned as council members tried to interrupt one another, “but whether we should go from a total of 14 days off to 15 that puts us in the 3 percent of Texas cities (that offer that many paid days off to its employees).”

“We don’t have to be like every other city,” Flores-Cale countered. “We can just be Kyle. My point is our staff deserves this. Adding one more day to make it 15 is OK in my book.”

“We would say ‘no’ because our vacation/holiday policy is disproportionately lenient compared to other cities and in particular as compared to the private sector,” Mitchell countered. “In my mind, if you reframed it from a 12-2 policy to a 13-1 policy to designate Juneteenth as a holiday but take a floating day away that would be a way to honor the day without going into the percentage that is pretty far out there” ignoring, as most in Kyle do, the reality that many non-Christians use floating days for religious observances such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Al-Hijra, Ramadan, Wesak, and/or Maha Shivratri, and that those days may be more meaningful and important for them than days off for, say, Good Friday or even Christmas.

“We already know we can’t compete with the private sector when it comes to pay,” Flores-Cale said. “So, likewise we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to them when it comes to holidays. If we’re not going to pay our employees the same salary they can make doing the same work in the private sector, then at least incentivize them with days off they couldn’t get in the private sector.”

Councilman Robert Rizo patronizingly said the city manager’s budget calls for a pay increase for city employees “because we are losing them to the private sector” as if that increase would close the public-private sector pay gap in any meaningful way.

Vendor falls on his sword for fireworks failure

Steve Davis, the director of pyrotechnics displays at American Fireworks, the company responsible for Kyle’s Fourth of July pyrotechnics spectacular that fell spectacularly short of expectations, assumed full responsibility for the show’s failure, telling the City Council Tuesday night it was the result of workers who were promised to him but failed to show up.

He confirmed he received no money from the City for the show and does not expect any payments. He offered to restage the fireworks display on an appropriate date later in the year.

“I apologize,” said Davis, who was the athletic director and head football coach at Lehman High School from when it opened in 2004 until 2012. “We take pride in our shows. We built our business on that. I’m extremely embarrassed about it. That’s not what we’re about. I’m here to make it right for the City of Kyle.”

Davis said he partnered with another company who had promised to augment Davis’s workers to help staff the Kyle show. It was those pyrotechnicians who failed to report to work. Councilman Robert Rizo told Davis he should have cancelled the show when it was known as early as 4:45 p.m. Sunday the promised pyrotechnic crew was not going to show up.

“At that time we should have made the critical judgment that we were not going to be ready by nine o’clock and should have cancelled in order to give the families (who were coming to see the Kyle show) the opportunity to go elsewhere,” Rizo said. “I would have rather had the opportunity to tell the families ‘I’m sorry. We cannot put on a show tonight,’ and you would have given them the opportunity to go elsewhere.”

City to co-host food distribution event next weekend

The Central Texas Food Bank in partnership with the City of Kyle and Texas Disposal Systems will be hosting a mass food distribution April 24 from 9 a.m. to noon at the Austin Community College Hays Campus, 1200 Kohlers Crossing. 

Central Texas residents can drive to this event to receive a box of assorted produce, milk, and a protein box. 

“Actual contents may vary depending on availability,” a City spokesperson said in announcing the event. “All are welcome and no registration is required.”

Volunteers will place food in the trunks of vehicles as they are driven through the distribution site. The food bank is asking that each household only send one person to the event, and that all attendees come in vehicles — there will be no walk-up distribution — to adhere to social distancing requirements.      

“We're all working hard to push through the rest of this pandemic and many of us have needed a little extra help,” council member Robert Rizo said in the city’s announcement. “But we are incredibly thankful to the Central Texas Food Bank for continuously providing that extra help to our community with these food distributions.”

Anyone wishing to volunteer to help distribute the food may do by clicking here.

The nature and challenges of downtown revitalization

 Following an apples-to-oranges discussion that was, for the most part, wildly off-subject, the City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday night to direct the Planning & Zoning Commission “to revise the CBD 1 & the CBD 2 zoning codes.” 

In introducing the measure, council member Dex Ellison said it was part of the council’s “downtown revitalization” initiatives.

However, council member Robert Rizo, who was the lone vote against approving the item, talked solely about “downtown development” projects, which is simply extraneous to the notion of “downtown revitalization.” Development involves the inanimate; i.e. increasing the number of buildings or, worse, the number of parking spaces in a specific destination. Revitalization involves the animate; i.e., increasing the number of people going to a specific destination.

“This (revising the zoning) is not what’s going to start the development downtown,” Rizo said. “What’s going to start the development downtown is what this council is doing.”

Which may be true, but that was not the point of Tuesday night’s discussion. It does, however, raise another point which is simply: What should the City Council concentrate on — development or revitalization? I would argue for the latter, even though that presents a two major challenges the council, for some reason, refuses to address, possibly because it is not even aware of their existence. The first is the fact that Kyle is not a walkable city and the second is the nature of Kyle’s workforce.

That first challenge is obvious to anyone who lives here. For example, in order for just about any resident of Kyle to go grocery shopping, get a haircut, eat out a restaurant, go the bank — whatever — he or she must use some form of a motorized vehicle. Kyle’s Comprehensive Plan even recognizes this obstacle in its section on Downtown Revitalization. Page 241 of the Comp Plan lists a series of goals for this effort, one of which is “Encourage trail system connections to the downtown and other commercial centers.” In other words, make Kyle more walkable, a most-worthwhile goal. But then I have been arguing for a separate section in the Comprehensive Plan devoted exclusively to hike/bike trails ever since I moved here in 2014.

The problem with the workforce is that the overwhelming percentage of it is not employed in Kyle. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the mean travel time to work for a Kyle resident is 36 minutes. Its data also shows 93 percent of Kyle’s workforce drives to work, 6 percent above the national average. While 3 percent of Americans walk or bicycle to their place of employment, that number in Kyle is 0 percent. What this means for downtown revitalization is that when workers have to drive long distances to and from work five days a week, the last thing they are going to want to do after they get home is to get back in their cars and drive to downtown Kyle, unless it’s for a specific event such as Pie in the Sky or a concert in the park. And successful downtown revitalization requires steady streams of people on a daily basis, not event-predicated streams four or five times a year.

But there’s a partial solution to this as well, as Community Development Director Howard Koontz told the council Tuesday.

“Our downtown is a neighborhood and that’s absolutely unique,” Koontz said. “There’s a lot of small towns in Texas — and I certainly don’t know all of them — but I’ve been trying to find an analogous city somewhere that has a downtown as residential as ours is. Most towns — especially the ones in the Hill Country — have a commercial square and residential once you get blocks away. But we have residential uses right on our main thoroughfares.”

Rizo argued that the City needed to develop more parking opportunities in order to spur revitalization. That, in fact, is the worst thing the City can do. Simply look at any city that has experienced a successful downtown revitalization effort. All of them have followed one simple rule: The only way to get a lot of people into a downtown area is to have a lot of people living in that downtown area.

That means the first step in achieving a downtown revitalization in Kyle is to capitalize on that important fact Koontz pointed out: “Our downtown is a neighborhood.” Create a sense of community in that neighborhood. Develop a survey that asks downtown residents what amenities they would like within walking distances of their homes and then take the time and make the effort to go door-to-door to every residence in downtown to get that survey completed.

The second step would be to encourage even more residents to live in or within easy walking distance of downtown. And this is where revising the CBD zoning codes comes into play. For example, remove the multifamily restrictions in both CBD1 and CBD2 zoning. Not that you would want the type of apartment complexes you see on Cromwell Drive located downtown, but some two-story, all-brick exterior, loft-style apartments could fit very comfortably downtown and attract just the type of empty-nesters that spur neighborhood revitalization efforts.

For the first 30 years I lived in Dallas, downtown became a ghost town after 6 p.m. City leaders made all kinds of efforts at downtown revitalization, none of which worked. Then, in the 1990s, developers began turning vacated downtown warehouses into residential lofts. After they became 100 percent occupied, others began building townhouse projects downtown and other residential projects quickly followed. Suddenly downtown Dallas became an attractive place to live in the city. A development of single-family homes called Bryan Place on the eastern edge of downtown built in the 1960s saw property values skyrocket in the 1990s. Today, downtown Dallas is a buzz of activity between 6 p.m. and midnight. Downtown Austin is still active after dark even though its principle attractions from years gone by — the music outlets — have diminished to the point of almost disappearing completely. However, if you look at the Austin skyline, most of those skyscrapers are residential buildings and it’s those residents that breathe life into the downtown area.

It’s not rocket science: To revitalize downtown, you have to get people to live downtown. As Koontz pointed out, Kyle is unique in that it already has a lot of downtown residences. So concentrate any revitalization effort in (1) determining what will get them to walk outside of their homes and (2) attracting more people to live downtown who don’t want to rely on the automobile to get them to where they want to go.

Council erects barriers to affordable housing in Kyle

 Affordable rental housing has three requirements. The first requirement is that it be housing, places where individuals can actually live. The second requirement is that the housing that is offered be for rent, not for sale, and that usually means an apartment complex. The third requirement is that it be affordable; i.e., housing where the rents are lower than the market average. One of the first requirements for such a project to be affordable is that the property on which it is built should cost less than the market average. Those affordable land opportunities are most often found on certain fringes of the city; rarely, if ever, are they found closer to the city center. In Kyle, specifically, the affordable fringes are going to be found almost exclusively on the east side of I-35.

However, last night, the City Council voted 4-3 it doesn’t want affordable rental housing built on affordable land on the east side of Kyle, effectively creating an impenetrable barrier that will prohibit the construction of any affordable rental housing, as defined by HUD, in the city. In effect, the City has decided it doesn’t want folks who live on fixed incomes like Social Security to live here, especially at a time when the City is taking so much pride in constructing its “Uptown” haven for the well-to-do and increasing property taxes to construct an ecologically unfriendly police headquarters. Send “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to Buda or San Marcos because we definitely don’t want them in our city.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, as the name suggests, is a state government agency that, among other things, makes program funds available throughout the year to qualifying applicants for a wide range of housing and related activities. The TDHCA accepts applications for these funds and weighs them through a point system it has developed that is too complicated and too multi-layered to detail here. What you need to know is that the applications with the most points are granted the funds and the TDHCA normally declares only three winners per geographical area each year. Kyle falls into the Austin area geographical area. One of the necessary ingredients in any application is a formal resolution from the city in which the development is to be located that states the local government supports the project and such a recommendation is worth a whole lot of points. 

A company called KCG Development, LLC, was seeking to locate affordable rental housing, specifically a development for individuals 55-years-old and older, at 1351 Bunton Creek Road, and was hoping to win one of the awards from the TDHCA that would provide about 58 percent of the costs of the project. Thus it came before the City Council last night asking it to approve a support resolution KCG could include in its application to the TDHCA. The council said “no.”

Why did it say “no”? The argument was, essentially, a majority of council members don’t want affordable multi-family rental housing located on land that’s affordable; it can only be located on unaffordable land. Go figure.

Mayor Travis Mitchell said he could not support endorsing the project “just because there’s no multi-family in that area,” neglecting to point out that when Seton Hospital was approved for Kyle there were no other hospitals in that area either.

But then the mayor made a surprisingly (at least, to me) elitist comment: “While affordable housing is a great program, it’s to be administered in limited supply especially where it’s not close to areas where it makes more sense. I have high aspirations for Bunton Drive up there along that new road.”

Council member Dex Ellison put it just as bluntly: “I am in agreement on the need for 55 and up affordable housing. I’m empathetic to that idea. I would certainly be supportive of it, but in another part of our city — not in this area.” This statement marked the first time I had ever heard a Black public official support segregated housing.

“I know there is a need for more housing for 55-plus folks,” council member Robert Rizo, who sponsored the agenda item, said. 

Mayor pro tem Rick Koch and council member Michael Tobias joined Mitchell and Ellison in voting to kill the project.

Koch gets second term as mayor pro tem

The City Council voted unanimously last night to award District 5's Rick Koch a second consecutive one-year term as mayor pro tem after the only other person nominated — District 3's Robert Rizo — declined the nomination because of family health concerns.

The council also named freshman council member Yvonne Flores-Cale to represent the city on CAPCOG’s General Assembly. Two other appointments received zero interest from council members.

After Rizo nominated Koch as mayor pro-tem, Dex Ellison said he would like to nominate Rizo for the council’s No. 2 position behind the mayor, but Rizo declined. “It would be an honor to serve as mayor pro tem,” Rizo said. “Unfortunately, at this time, our family has some issues we’re dealing with healthwise and it might take some of my time … so at this time I would have to decline.”

No one on the council volunteered to replace former council member Tracy Scheel on the board of the Alliance Regional Water Authority, the organization created to meet the San Marcos-Kyle-Buda region’s water needs. It is expected the Public Works Department will put forward the name of a staff member to serve that role at the next council meeting Jan. 5. Likewise, no one on the council wanted to be a part of Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), which serves Hays, Bastrop, Burnet, Caldwell, Travis and Williamson counties. Kyle’s participation in CAMPO currently is largely ceremonial, but that is expected to change following the certification of the 2020 Census, which should boost Kyle’s official population over the 50,000 mark and thus make the city a voting member of the organization. 

CAPCOG, or the Capital Area Council of Government, is, according to its website, “an advocate, planner and coordinator for important regional issues in the ten-county Capital Area. It works directly with its member local governments to recognize opportunities for cooperation and eliminate unnecessary duplication in emergency communications, elderly assistance, law enforcement training, criminal justice planning, solid waste reduction, homeland security planning, infrastructure development, transportation planning and economic development.”

It is also an opportunity to rub shoulders with neighboring government movers-and-shakers, although, at present, most of those shoulders are rubbed virtually. Flores-Cale’s appointment to CAPCOG came six days after the organization’s most recent General Assembly meeting, during which it appointed the members to the organization’s Executive Committee, the 29-member group that really drives CAPCOG. Executive Committee members serve one-year terms from January through December. Missing the Dec. 9 meeting means Kyle won’t be represented on CAPCOG’s Executive Committee until 2022 at the earliest. Ironically, it was Flores-Cale who drove the motion at the council’s Dec. 1 session to wait until after the mayoral runoff to fill the vacancies that were finally acted upon last night.

Swearing-in, runoff dates announced; Scheel gives farewell address

 Ashley Bradshaw and Yvonne Flores-Cale, the city council’s two recently elected members, will be sworn in during the council’s Nov. 17 meeting and the mayoral runoff election between incumbent Travis Mitchell and challenger Linda Tenorio will be held Dec. 8, it was decided Wednesday night.

The Dec. 8 date was chosen because it corresponds with runoffs already scheduled for that date in San Marcos.

In addition to the swearing-in ceremonies at the next council meeting, a special ceremony will be held for the two departing council members, Tracy Scheel and Alex Villalobos.

Scheel bade the council and the public a tearful farewell during last night’s council meeting.

“I want to thank all my fellow council members for being wonderful people to work with for the past three years,” she said. “It has been a joy to serve the City of Kyle and I do appreciate all of you. This is not my end of service for the City of Kyle. I will be here to do anything anybody needs.”

Scheel offered some words of advice for Flores-Cale, the person who defeated her in Tuesday’s election.

“You will be working with a great group of people,” Scheel said. “Please work with them and understand that they just as passionate about the city as you are and want what’s best for the city. Please work with them. That is the best way to make this city a better overall place to live, work and just have fun in.”

She said she hoped the city would “come together” so that it was not a case of “east versus west, not the originals versus in the implants, not downtown versus uptown.”

At-large council member Robert Rizzo, who is a resident of the district Scheel represents and who, somewhat ironically, was disqualified from running against Scheel in 2017, thanked her “for all the work and all the time commitment you gave to our district.”

Scheel never had to run for election before this year. When she first announced her candidacy in 2017, Rizzo filed to run against her. But on the day the candidates convened at Hall City for the ballot placement drawing, the city secretary pulled Rizzo aside and told him he had been disqualified because the residence listed on his voters registration at that time was not within the city limits. Scheel stood there looking somewhat stunned realizing she had become a city council member without having to seek election.

Villalobos, who did not seek re-election this year, told Scheel that the two of them are leaving the city in a better place than it was when they both joined the council three years ago.

“I am just happy I got to work with you in having a small part in what this city is today,” Villalobos said.

Mayor Mitchell told Scheel “It is hard to imagine this council without you. You have been such a strong, steady, caring, passionate, compassionate presence on this council.”

After acknowledging that “I might be out there with you,” Mitchell praised Scheel for “devoting yourself to the City of Kyle, not only for the last three years, but longer, and I anticipate in the future as well. Thank you for your service. Thank you for everything you’ve done for the City of Kyle.”

It was also announced Tuesday’s election will be canvassed next Tuesday.

The challenging task of remaining optimistic

 Two nights ago,  the city council held its most important meeting of the year. Not just the year to date, but the entire year. Two nights ago the council assumed the awesome responsibility of planning how much money the city should spend over the 365 days beginning Oct. 1 and exactly what they should spend that money on, as well as deciding the rate at which they would tax property owners in order to help pay for those expenses. And, as it should be, there were a host of concerned citizens ready to speak both in-person and remotely during the public hearings scheduled as part of last night’s agenda.

Except they weren’t concerned about the important part. They weren’t concerned about how the city was going to tax them. They weren’t concerned about how the city planned on spending the money that taxpayers were about to entrust them with. No, instead they were concerned about a comparatively trivial matter — a street name.

Don’t get me wrong. I was openly critical of the council’s decision last week to rename Rebel Road Fajita Drive. But, in the grand scheme of things, that road name pales in importance to the level of the city services our tax money is going to fund for the upcoming year – how the city plans on spending the money they receive from our tax payments.

Now I’m really going to try to be optimistic here. For the last 24 hours, I’ve been trying to convince myself that these people who spoke during last night’s public hearings don’t represent the thinking of the overall majority of Kyle citizens. I remain optimistic that the majority of Kyle’s residents, to reduce this to a personal level, actually do believe it’s more important to make sure their household has an income sufficient to meet their expenses than the name of a street they need to drive on to take their child to school. And I’m praying that the majority of Kyle residents aren’t as completely out of touch with the what’s going on in America today as too many of those speakers, who displayed a complete lack of empathy, were last night. But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

First, let me just throw some numbers to consider. The public meeting on the tax rate took all of three minutes and six seconds, most of which was consumed by City Manager Scott Sellers reading from the required text that must be a part of the record before any municipal government in Texas enacts a tax rate. The public hearing on the budget – how the city plans to spend all the taxpayers’ money over the next year — consumed a whopping seven minutes and 17 seconds. The public hearing on the name of one 1.67-mile section of a farm to market road consumed two hours, 29 minutes and 36 seconds. That is textbook for “Priorities Completely Out of Whack.”

I will admit, however, that, for the most part, the tone, the presentation, the content of what was said by the citizens during that marathon was civil. I did appreciate hearing something I had not heard before — the comment from one resident whose residence in Kyle predated 1969 when Sonny Falcon journeyed down from Austin to sell the very first fajita here. She said that event which was held in such high esteem at last week’s council meeting was not only not considered that big of a deal at the time, but also  not that big of a deal anytime after. And, frankly, I must say I believed her. She lived here back then. She should know about what was happening more than any of the rest of us who have located here after 1969. So, yes, I’m going to take her word for it. She probably accurately described, at least from her point of view, the mood of the city at that time. And her point of view, at least in the opinion of this writer, is absolutely valid and worthwhile and I don’t believe anyone who did come here after 1969 should challenge that validity.

There were, however, some absolutely painful moments. Like when some guy called in from Los Angeles to offer a definition of the word “rebel” even though such a definition, while possibly accurate, is completely irrelevant in today’s discussions of these issues. But that cringe-worthy moment absolutely paled to that drop-dead scene of someone named, I believe, Chevo Pastrano, who, demonstrating he is completely, totally, 100 percent out of touch with today’s realities, said in response to keeping “Rebel” as the name of the road in question “I don’t think anyone is going to be offended by that.”

That’s exactly the same thing as saying “Officer, I don’t think anyone is going to be offended if you keep your knee on the black man’s throat’s a little bit longer.” And I hope, I fervently pray, that the overwhelming majority of Kyle residents don’t share that total lack of empathy. And I’m going to be optimistic about the fact that they don’t. I’m not so optimistic as to believe they will be as equally offended by that name for the road, but only that, unlike Pastrano, they will recognize that other people will be. And hopefully, some of those folks will trying to understand why they are offended, even though they might not agree with them.

I’m a huge NBA fan. I did not watch Tuesday night’s city council meeting live because I was watching the unpleasant carnage that befell my beloved Dallas Mavericks at the hands of the Los Angeles Clippers. But I also watched Clippers head coach Doc Rivers in his post game news conference and something he said literally brought tears to my eyes. “I love this country,” Rivers said. “Why doesn’t this country love us back?” Doc Rivers, for one, would be offended by keeping the name Rebel Drive. So would the all the members of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team who, in protest of another unarmed black man being shot seven times in the back by a white police officer a couple of nights ago in Kenosha, Wis., refused to take the court during yesterday’s playoff contest with the Orlando Magic. So would all the other NBA teams who displayed their solidarity with the Bucks so that the NBA was forced to postpone all three of today’s scheduled games until Friday, at the earliest.

Yes, I am going to remain optimistic. I’m going to keep telling myself that the overwhelming majority of Kyle residents have their priorities straight and that’s why they didn’t participate in last night’s circus. I’m going to keep telling myself that the overwhelming majority of Kyle residents accept the reality that those who are the targets of racism can indeed actually be offended by that racism. I’m going to keep telling myself that the overwhelming majority of Kyle residents are better than some of what I saw on display at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

I’m even going to be optimistic that some of the Kyle residents actually remember that they were warned three, four years ago, that water rates were going to have to be increased significantly this year because the city pledged to share the debt associated with financing a mammoth pipeline endeavor to deliver water to the city from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. Kyle’s share of the debt for this project through the end of 2021 is around $52 million, Finance Director Perwez Moheet reminded everyone Tuesday night. As with all debts, it must be paid. So I’m going to be optimistic that the individual complaining about the water rate increase was not just grandstanding, but that he simply wasn’t knowledgeable about this agreement and this debt obligation. I’m going to be optimistic that those citizens who claim they are examining the budget will also learn to examine the source of the funds they are concerned about (Hint: not all municipal expenditures come from taxes, so it’s foolish to assume that they do).

See, I’m trying. I really am. But it isn’t always easy. Especially when I hear that many of these people who haven’t a clue about what’s going on in this city, what the history is, what the solid reasoning is for these decisions, who don’t know how to actually read and understand a budget, have announced they are candidates for political positions.

For the record, the city council during Tuesday’s meeting officially lowered the property tax rate, albeit by only 2 cents per $100 valuation. They also adopted a budget for the upcoming fiscal year as they are mandated by law to do by no later than Aug. 29 (one person speaking at the meeting suggested passage of the budget be delayed, i.e., that the city should defy state law — but, still, I’m going to continue to try to be optimistic) with only a few minor changes. Sellers informed the council it had received a rebate check from the Texas Municipal League’s insurance pool in the amount of $37,000. Council member Robert Rizo suggested that $31,000 of that should be applied toward a 2 percent salary increase for the city’s department heads to match the 2 percent raise awarded to all other city employees in the current budget. The council unanimously agreed. Then council member Tracy Scheel suggested the remaining $6,000 be set aside to help businesses located along the former Rebel Road deal with the required change-of-address costs. That, too, was approved unanimously and enthusiastically.

Oh, and about that road. Officially, it’s no longer Fajita Drive. It’s not officially back to Rebel Road either. It will be referred to in polite society as FM 150, pending the appointment of an ad-hoc committee that will be assigned the task of recommending a permanent new name. Those ideas were also agreed upon unanimously, which is also cause for some optimism.

Like, I said. I’m trying. I really am.

Council limits bar hours

The city council voted unanimously Tuesday to force all bars in the city to close by midnight Sunday through Thursday nights. On Friday and Saturday nights, local bars will be permitted to remain open until the state-mandated closing time of 2 a.m. the following day.

The council said they reserved the right to change the ordinance again any time they wanted, because the purpose of the ordinance, in reality, is to restrict bar operations in the downtown area and not necessarily in other areas that might be developed away from residential areas.

“There are going to be opportunities as our city evolves to further amend the hours as the need arises,” Mayor Travis Mitchell advised council members before they voted on the ordinance.

“I can see this being an issue later on,” council member Alex Villalobos cautioned. “For the downtown area, because it’s so close to residents, it’s a good start.”

“I’m not anti-bar,” said council member Robert Rizo, the ordinance’s sponsor. “I’m thinking about public safety. When I see an area that’s going against public safety, I really want to address that issue.”

Rizo did not address any specific public safety concerns he had about the bars hours of operation during Tuesday’s discussion.

As was originally presented, the ordinance would have allowed bars to remain open Thursdays through 2 a.m. Friday, but that provision was removed by an amendment offered by Rizo when he moved passage of the ordinance.