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.”

Three council members join governor's war against Texas cities

 Gov. Gregg Abbott and his Republican cohorts in the legislature don’t like cities. Why? Because that’s where Democrats live and in order to remain in power, Abbott and his merry band of reactionaries need to silence the voice and reduce the influence of those living in Texas’ metropolitan areas. Now it appears that three members of our own city council — Dex Ellison, Yvonne Flores-Cale and Michael Tobias — are joining Abbott’s crusade to neuter cities.

Abbott has championed and the legislature has approved capping property tax rates cities can collect, but not doing the same thing for any other taxing entity that collects property tax. They have also prohibited cities from enacting ordinances to protect their environment as well as voting restrictions that only effect metropolitan areas. He tried hard, but so far has failed, to prohibit cities from passing laws that prohibit texting while driving, or to enact ordinances protecting LGBTQ residents. Abbott even wants to prohibit cities from enacting tree ordinances simply because the city of Austin once prohibited him from chopping down a heritage tree on property he purchased unless he replaced it with three other trees. Yes, this proposal Abbott wanted the legislature to pass was a personal vendetta.

Here’s what the Houston Chronicle, in an article referring to the governor as “Comrade Abbott,” recently wrote:

“Gone are the days when the Republican Party of Texas could be counted on to defend local control. No longer do Texas conservatives believe that government closest to the people is the best kind of government. Instead we’ve witnessed the emergence of a political movement dedicated to stealing power away from local voters and moving it to Austin, where big money donors have created a one-stop shop to get what they want out of government.”

And there was this from the Texas Municipal League:

“From proposed revenue caps, to spending caps, to tree ordinances, to texting while driving, and more, no one has ever proposed such sweeping restrictions on local voters having a voice in shaping the character of their communities. Seventy-four percent of Texans live in our 1,215 towns and cities and the decisions they have made at the local level have put Texas cities at the top of the nation in success. Stifling their voices through an all-powerful, overreaching state government is a recipe for disaster.”

Abbott admits to leading this war against cities. “For us to be able to continue our legacy of economic freedom, it was necessary that we begin to speak up and to propose laws to limit the ability of cities to California-ize the great state of Texas,” said Abbott at an event with the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute back in 2017.

He went so far as to tell this group that Texas  should issue a “ban across the board” on municipal regulations.

“One strategy would be for the state of Texas to take a ‘rifle shot after rifle shot after rifle shot’ approach to try to override all these local regulations,” Abbott explained to the conservative audience. “I think it would be far simpler, and frankly easier for those of you who have to run your lives and your businesses on a daily basis, if the state of Texas adopted an overriding policy to create certain standards that must be met.” 

Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League, said one way Abbott and his cohorts could create these standards is by having the state strip all 352 home-rule cities like Kyle, which are free to enact regulations as long as they don’t expressly conflict with state law, of their home-rule powers. They would then be treated as general-rule cities, which are usually small and can regulate only areas the state specifically gives them permission to oversee. The Texas constitution specifies that home-rule cities can't pass ordinances that contradict state law, which legal experts say means cities wouldn't have much recourse if Texas decided to preempt their powers.

Sandlin has naturally been an outspoken opponent of Abbott’s attacks on municipalities. He says this hostility toward cities and local control didn’t exist at the Texas Capitol before Abbott became governor.

“It’s only been since 2015 that we’ve seen this new tactic, where local control is no longer a good thing, it’s actually an evil thing," says Sandlin. "The new good thing is now liberty from local regulations."

Abbott & Friends’ big push against municipal governments of late is to prohibit them from lobbying at the state level. And Ellison, Flores-Cale and Tobias are fine with that. They, too, seem to think cities should not have a voice when decisions are being made, laws are being passed, under the capitol dome that directly affect Kyle and other cities. The reason I say that is because those three voted to remove funding for a state lobbyist that was in the city’s budget that was finally passed last night, a move that thankfully failed on a 4-3 roll-call vote.

Why did they vote against this funding? As Flores-Cale explained, it is because the current special session of the legislature is once again considering bills, as part of Abbott’s war on cities, that, if passed, would prohibit cities from such lobbying efforts. But it makes absolutely no sense to stop your ability to persuade unless you absolutely have to. That’s tantamount to the soldier saying “There’s a chance I might be killed in this battle, so I’m going to commit suicide right now.”

In fact, what these council members and the rest of the council should be doing is investigating forming or joining a coalition of other municipalities to mount legal challenges to this law and other statutes limiting municipal government effectiveness and control. 

Don’t meekly surrender, as Ellison, Flores-Cale and Tobias seem to want to do. Fight back! Fight to protect local control of city governments. Don’t surrender that authority to the state.

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.

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.