So I was having this conversation one night last week with one High Ranking City Official (who henceforth shall be referred to as HRCO and who shall remain nameless only because this person probably did not know elements of this conversation would be made available to one and all at the time that it took place). Anyway HRCO asked me if I was planning on attending Tuesday’s groundbreaking of what is now being called the Hays Logistics Center.
This apparently is a pretty big deal. It will take place at 10 a.m. on that land being developed as a business park across Kyle Crossing, north of the Home Depot. Eventually, it’s supposed to be a two-building complex, although, officially, this groundbreaking will be for the first of those two, a 220,000-square-foot structure scheduled to open by the end of the year.
I’m not much for groundbreakings. I appreciate their ceremonial content, but, mostly they rank just below hairstyling for me as a spectator sport. Besides, as I told HRCO, by nature I’m a night person who usually calls it a day around 3 a.m. and tries to be awake and functional no later than the crack of noon each day. Watching dirt being turned at 10 a.m.? Not so much. Not only that, I said, but I have it on good authority an even bigger announcement of a more important economic development deal for Kyle is about to be unveiled any day now.
"That’s true," HRCO, who is more than HR enough to know about these things, told me. "But this one is pretty significant as well."
"I guess that’s true," I replied, "since I learned it wouldn’t even have been possible had we not had That Triple Freeport Thingee."
I guess I should pause in this narrative to explain the term That Triple Freeport Thingee. Section 11.251 of the Texas Tax Code exempts facility owners from having to pay property taxes on "goods, wares, ores and merchandise other than oil, gas and petroleum products" providing those "goods, wares, ores and merchandise" leave the state within 175 days after they arrive here. Section 11.437 of that same code extends that same exemption to "’goods in transit’, described as goods acquired inside or outside the state, detained at a facility in which the owner of the goods has no direct or indirect ownership of the facility, detained for storing purposes by the person who acquired or imported the property, and then shipped to another location in or out of this state within 175 days." These tax breaks are called "freeport exemptions." Now, as most property tax payers know, the three primary collectors of property taxes are the city, the county and the local school district, with that last collector collecting the lion’s share of the taxes. It takes all three of those entities granting those just described exemptions for a community to have That Triple Freeport Thingee. For a long time, only Hays County and the City of Kyle granted those exemptions here which sent major developments such as the Samsung semiconductor facility that went to Manor and the Amazon fulfillment warehouse in San Marcos looking for those more economically favorable locations. After a steady period of portraying the Hays Consolidated School District as the villain in the area’s pursuit of economic development and genuinely working really hard to make the school district look bad and feel guilty, the no-growthers on the school board were ultimately beaten down to the point where they finally gave in last year and granted this "freeport exemption," finally giving this area the much desired That Triple Freeport Thingee.
However, when I credited That Triple Freeport Thingee to HRCO as making the Tuesday groundbreaking possible, I was stopped short.
"Well, that’s not exactly true," HRCO told me.
"What do mean ‘That’s not exactly true’?" I replied. "I mean the City’s official announcement about this project — right there on the City’s web page — reads, and I quote, ‘Both developers added that this project would not have been possible without the passage of the freeport tax exemption by Hays County and Hays Consolidated Independent School District in 2016 and 2017.’ (Side note: I have not been able to contact either developer — Hillwood Properties out of Dallas and HPI Real Estate Services & Investments of Austin — to determine if they did truly say this.) And our own, highly trusted, mayor tweeted ‘This project made possible by the @HaysCISD school board’s freeport vote last year.’ Are you telling me these folks are engaging in some form of hyperbole?"
"What I’m saying is Triple Freeport really doesn’t factor into this project," HRCO said. "For all practical purposes, this is, right now, just going to be an empty building. Now, perhaps some future tenants in those buildings will be able to use the freeport exemptions. And perhaps the developers are building this project because they believe the exemption will help them land tenants. But for right now, this is just going to be an empty, leaseable building that didn’t require triple freeport to be constructed,"
I found the entire conversation terribly deflating. Next thing I know someone will be telling me there’s no Santa Claus. Funny thing about this new knowledge, however. It actually made me decide to set the alarm Tuesday morning so that I can be semi-awake enough to attend the groundbreaking.
However, I still draw the line at hairstyling tournaments.
I’m shocked! And, I must admit, I was terribly wrong. When the Planning & Zoning Commission proposed conducting a survey on short-term rentals I figured, at a minimum, 80 percent of those who responded would be against having them anywhere near the city limits. I misjudged this one by a wide margin. According to the survey results, which can be found here, nearly two-thirds of those who responded said Kyle should allow short-term rentals.
The survey attracted more than 500 responses, which is remarkable in itself. To put that number in perspective, according to a story in today’s Austin American-Statesman, in which Elon University conducted a poll of Austin residents which revealed low support for locating the Amazon HQ2 project in this area, Elon said it "typically interviews about 500 to 600 people 18 years or older when conducting polls." That’s 600 people asked to represent the opinions of the entire "Austin area." P&Z’s survey got that many responses to sample a much smaller population base.
According to the survey, of the 502 respondents who answered the question "How should Kyle approach short-term rentals," 328 — 65.34 percent — said they should be allowed in one form or another, with 48 percent of them saying they should be allowed as long as some kind of regulations were in place.
Only a little less than 31 percent (155 of the respondents) said short-term rentals have no place in Kyle.
The results of the survey are expected to be discussed during the Planning & Zoning’s workshop which begins at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall. If you can’t attend, the hearing should be available to view on the city’s web site or, if you are a Spectrum Cable customer, on Channel 10.
I have reached out to Mayor Travis Mitchell, the other members of the City Council, as well as Planning & Zoning Chair Rick Koch, for their comments on the survey’s results and should I receive any responses, I will let you know.
(Updated 12:49 p.m. Monday) Council member Damon Fogley, who supports short-term rentals in Kyle, told me Sunday evening he was not as surprised by the results of the survey as I was.
"I found that just from reading some of the Facebook posts, it looked to me that most people wanted to have them, but they wanted some control," Fogley said.
He added he would want any "control" mechanisms that are put in place to include one that would guarantee Hotel Occupancy Taxes are collected from short-term rental owner-operators just as they are from hotels, motels and inns. He said he realized state law required these owner-operators to pay the taxes, but the question remains "Are they?"
"I think they (short-term rentals) should be permitted," Fogley said. "I’m a big property-rights person. You can see that by my voting record the last few years. I’ve been in favor of the majority of the development throughout the city. I see short-term rentals as a way for some people to supplement their income. Most people in Kyle are middle-class families and why not let them rent out their house for someone in town for the Formula One or to see something at Texas State. These people are prepared to spend a decent amount of money during their stay in Kyle. So I’m in favor of it, but at the same time I don’t think it can be completely unrestricted."
Too often I see evidence that the success of a democratic government depends on the stupidity of those being governed. In Kyle, however, it’s not so much stupidity as it is the laissez-faire attitude of the local populace. Look at the facts: Only 8.3 percent of Kyle’s registered voters bothered to cast a ballot in last year’s mayoral election. That means 91.7 percent simply don’t give a damn and when you have that many people who don’t give a damn you wind up with municipal policies that are stupid, illogical and potentially downright dangerous.
Take the city’s sidewalk policy, as an example. Because so many simply don’t give a damn, the minuscule minority that do has bludgeoned the city into adopting this masquerade, this Wizard-of-Oz form of tomfoolery that argues individual property owners shouldn’t have to foot the bill for sidewalk repairs; they should be paid for by the city, forgetting, for some reason, that the money the city has to spend on these repairs come from the taxes paid by those individual property owners. It’s worse than the oil filter commercial where the salesman says "You can pay me now or you can pay me later," this one is along the lines of "You can pay me now, next year, the year after that and on into forever and never get a thing in return." And because that 91.7 percent who don’t give a damn, that’s what happens around here.
How that manifests itself was made clear during last night’s City Council meeting when Public Works Director Harper Wilder outlined the results of the city’s sidewalk repair pilot program in which $20,000 of taxpayer funds was set aside in the budget to pay for the leveling of sidewalk sections. The current budget hikes that amount to $50,000. Harper told the council that because most of the city’s uneven sidewalks were located in Plum Creek, that’s where the $20,000 was spent. That’s right, all money put into this particular pot by all the property owners in all of Kyle was spent on repairing sidewalks in just one subdivision, which also happens to be the subdivision that sends the most voters to the polls each election cycle. Wilder said Plum Creek was chosen however, because "it’s the most condensed area" and then he added in typical municipal government double-talk Plum Creek was where "we had the largest number of sidewalks repairs in one place per volume."
Wilder did say that the city will be concentrating on subdivisions on the east side of I-35 during the next repair spree, although "spree" may not be the operative word here since the waiting list is long..
As Wilder described it, this sidewalk leveling process takes place when tree roots "next to the sidewalks are causing the sidewalks to heave at the joints and it raises the sidewalk joints causing a trip or fall hazard." I emphasized that last part of what Wilder said because it is really important. It illustrates the folly of this sidewalk program and the danger it poses to property owners. And don’t fret, I’ll eventually get around to explaining just how dangerous it is.
In addition to just picking out a politically strong problematic subdivision, the sidewalk repair folks, like disc jockeys of a by-gone era, take requests. "Typically we’ll get a call from a citizen that says we have a hazard there on the sidewalk," Wilder said in response to a question from Mayor Travis Mitchell, "Our staff will go and identify that and kind of give it a priority level and that depends on the elevation difference. We have a running list right now" of property owners requesting sidewalk repairs.
Here’s part of the problem with this. The contractor who actually performs the repair work told the council last night a typical repair takes "a day or two." So under the best of conditions, working every day, 365 days a year, that translates into about 240 repairs completed per year. But we also know these folks aren’t going to be working every day of the year. According to the Working Day Payroll Calendar as developed by University Human Resources at the University of Iowa, this calendar year contains 261 working days. So now we’re talking about 174 repairs made per annum. And, in a response to a question posed by council member Dex Ellison, the city’s staff said that "running list" Wilder refers to currently contains more than 400 requests from citizens for sidewalk repairs. That’s a backlog of two years and 3½ months.
This brings me right back to that dang "trip or fall hazard." If a person, let’s say for the sake of this argument, an elderly person is out for a walk during a nice spring-like afternoon and an uneven sidewalk causes that person to trip and fall, seriously injuring himself in the process, the property owner where that sidewalk is located can be held liable. In Kyle, the city cannot be held liable, only the property owner. Now, in order to collect damages, the person filing the lawsuit must prove negligence on the part of the property owner. The courts have held that any one of three factors can be considered by a jury when determining negligence and one of them is the property owner was "in a position where they reasonably should have known of the dangerous surface and failed to repair it." The operative word in that last sentence are "known" and "repair." Reporting it is simply not enough. And if you’re on a waiting list that takes more than two years for your number to be called, that tells a jury you knew for that long "of the dangerous surface and failed to repair it" all that time.
At one point during the meeting, Mitchell wanted to know "how difficult it might be to put some kind of time line (presumably on the city’s web page) for when polylevel (the sidewalk repair function) will be in a particular subdivision" so residents can see that they "are on the schedule for March, or on the schedule for the fall." Mitchell said he wanted to "be able to give residents an answer when they ask when is their sidewalk going to be repaired."
Council member Daphne Tenorio took Mitchell’s suggestion a step further. She wanted the city’s web page to (1) have a place where residents could apply for the sidewalk repair and (2) publish that so-called "running list" so they could see about where they stood in the pecking order, given the caveat they could at any time be bumped even lower down the list if the city received a request it deemed was of a higher priority. Which is all well and good but it’s like a doctor giving a cancer patient a slice of apple pie. True, the pie, especially if it came from our own hometown pie company, could make the patient feel better but it’s not going to do anything to treat the cancer.
The simple fact is the city should not be in the sidewalk business in the first place. It’s simply not fair, it defies logic, for someone on a rural piece of property with no sidewalks at all to be forced to pay for the repair of Plum Creek’s sidewalks. And what good is it to know where you stand on a two-year waiting list when that gives you no liability protection against someone who gets injured by sidewalks on your property?
But, then, since I’ve already established that most people in Kyle simply don’t give a damn, it only illustrates once again that the government functions essentially on the stupidity of those being governed.
All the voting items on last night’s agenda were approved 6-0 (council member Alex Villalobos did not attend) except for one — the minutes of the last meeting. And the lone person voting against those minutes was the only council member who did not attend that meeting. Go figure.
The city’s sales tax revenues exceeded forecasts by 2.89 percent for the month of April and were almost 6 percent higher than last year’s receipts for the same month. This marked the sixth time in the seven months of the current fiscal year that revenues were above expectations. It translates into a budget surplus of $165,753.12 for the year.
The sales tax report is a significant turnaround from last year when, at this same time, the city had recorded three months of lower-than-anticipated receipts in the first seven months of the fiscal year — a reflection of a more conservative estimate for the current budget cycle.
April’s sales tax revenues were $519,728.54 — $14,609.54 more than forecast and $29,363.54 more than was collected in April 2017.
You can see the entire sales tax report here.
Here’s an immediate benefit of Congress’ recently passed tax reform bill I wasn’t expecting: It could mean lower monthly gas bills for 8,000-plus Kyle customers of Centerpoint Energy. That is if the City Council, as it should, says "yes" Tuesday night to a resolution on its agenda to approve a rate decrease for the gas services provided by Centerpoint.
This is particularly noteworthy because Centerpoint, citing increased costs due to the effects of Hurricane Harvey among other reasons, had asked for between a 2.8 percent and 4 percent rate increase for residential customers back on Nov. 16. Instead, pending council approval of what should be a routine item, those customers should see between a 4.1 percent and a 5.9 percent reduction. Small commercial customers will also see a reduction, but not as large a one has they would have enjoyed had Centerpoint’s Nov. 16 proposal been adopted.
Apparently fearing subjecting the city’s desire for lower rates to litigation would not be successful, Centerpoint has agreed to the revised rate structure that the council will vote to approve Tuesday. In addition, Centerpoint has agreed to "refund to ratepayers $640,158 through a one-time bill credit that it has over-collected though its Interim Rate Adjustment (IRA) clause."
According to documents filed by the city, Centerpoint was seeking to increase its annual revenue by $1.2 million, including "a 12-month surcharge (of) approximately $676,000 in extraordinary expenses it incurred related to Hurricane Harvey." In response, the city "engaged special counsel and rate consultants to review Centerpoint’s application to increase rates" and "After extensive review the city’s special counsel and rate consultants concluded that a decrease in Centerpoint’s annual revenue requirement is in order. Their review suggests that Centerpoint’s rates should be decreased by approximately $5 million instead of an increase of about $1.2 million (including the surcharge for hurricane expenses) as proposed by Centerpoint. The rate consultants’ suggested decrease is premised on numerous adjustments to Centerpoint’s cost of service, including the effect of the reduction in the corporate federal income tax rate (arising from the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), adjustments to its return on equity, its net invested capital (also known as its "rate base"), customer-service expenses, incentive-compensation expenses, and expenses related to pension and employee benefits."
Kyle’s Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix told me yesterday that Centerpoint has some 7,800 residential customers in Kyle as well as 318 additional customers classified as "small commercial customers" and four labeled as "large volume commercial." Currently, the average bill for a residential customer was $40.31. Under Centerpoint’s November proposal, that would have increased to $41.42. Under the terms of the proposal the council will be asked to approve Tuesday, that bill will be $38.67 effective May 22.
The proposal to lower the gas rates is arguably the most noteworthy item on Tuesdays’ agenda that also includes two public hearings, one on a proposed zoning change that would pave the way for a small apartment complex to be located on Creekside Trail and the second on a fee-waiver request involving property on Windy Hill Road.
It’s interesting to note that the last time a zoning change was proposed for Creekside Trail it resulted in a storm of angry residents coming out to protest the request before both the Planning & Zoning Commission and the City Council. However, no one opposed this latest proposed change at Tuesday’s P&Z meeting at which the request was approved by a 6-0 vote. The difference between the two proposals is that the first request, the one that brought the storm of outrage, was for an elderly living housing project to be located at what is now the terminus of Creekside, and all the protesting residents lived between the proposed project and the only exit out of Creekside, on Highway 150. This proposed apartment complex, however, is located closer to 150 than those residences.
For the record, the city’s staff opposes the request to waive Adjacent Lane Mile Fee related to property at 2305 Windy Hill for the logical reason that it doesn’t meet the requirements for the waiver.
One final item I find fascinating and that’s something labeled "Site Development Ordinance Amendment" as part of the Executive Session discussion. I have absolutely no clue about anything discussed in executive session, but what fascinates me is that this item appears on the agenda immediately following the one at the end of which the council voted to enter into agreement negotiations with a property owner on Windy Hill who has been repeatedly thwarted by the council in his attempts to get a zoning request approved that would allow him to build an apartment complex. City Manager Scott Sellers told me after the April 3 executive session he could not give me any details of the agreement, but predicted he might be able to be more forthcoming by the next council meeting. Well, Tuesday is that next council meeting and I have to wonder if this amendment to be discussed in this executive session is that final agreement.
City Manager Scott Sellers told the City Council tonight that the equivalent of 25 percent of the city’s population made the pilgrimage to Gregg-Clarke Park March 24 for what was billed as the Easter Eggstravaganza, but next year that same pilgrimage may offer slightly different pathways.
"It was a very well attended event," Sellers told the council. "If you lived close to the Gregg-Clarke Park, you were probably impacted in some way by the traffic."
Sellers said larger-than-anticipated attendance was the result of having the city’s annual Easter egg hunt on a weekend day this time around and the fact that the city partnered with Icon Church which had already planned a helicopter drop of eggs.
"There were probably a dozen or so different items we need to rectify for next year," the city manager said. "This being the first year of this new approach, there were quite a few things we saw we could do better. All in all, I was very pleased. We estimate we had 10,000 people attend, which is a very large attendance for an Easter egg hunt. But we had attendees from Austin and San Marcos and south. So I was very pleased with how it turned out."
Sellers invited and encouraged public input into how the event could be improved in 2019, "but, like I said, we have probably a dozen or so different, fairly significant changes for next year."
Sellers didn’t enumerate those ideas during the meeting, but when the council moved into executive session he revealed two of the changes he would most like to see involved the management of both traffic and young children.
Sellers said on the date set aside for next year’s Easter-themed event "We plan to make Center Street one way from 150 around the (Wallace Middle) school then back toward the Post Office. That way we can funnel everyone through. We can handle parking better that way, too."
Sellers said he took his 3-year-old child to the event and next year "I will not allow segregation of 4 and younger and parents. We can’t have that."
He said different hunts were separated into respective age groups, but that the parents were not permitted to be with their children during the actual egg searches. As a result, he said, with the younger children "We had a lot of kids who were stranded. There were a lot of names being called out for parents to come and pick up their kids. It’s too young for kids 4 and under to be alone, away from a parent and then to have a helicopter almost land on them."
He said most of the other changes had to do with the specific layout of the event.
Sellers also announced the new time and date for the Steeplechase Park Dog Park groundbreaking for all those out there who get all goose-bumpy at the sight of ceremonial dirt being overturned: Friday at 10 a.m.
Every item on tonight’s council agenda was approved by a 6-0 vote (council member Daphne Tenorio, citing a conflict, did not attend) with absolutely no debate and not that much discussion. The one exception was the 30 minutes spent on Item 7, review and acceptance of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report as well as the independent audit of the city’s financial records for the preceding fiscal year. Mayor Travis Mitchell had a number of questions he directed to the city’s Finance Director Perwez Moheet and Joel Perez, a partner in the firm that conducted the independent audit, about the methodology of each.
Mitchell said after the meeting his questions did not come from any concern he might harbor about the state of the city’s finances. It was simply the opportunity to discuss financial issues, an opportunity Mitchell said the city council doesn’t have all that often.
"I undergo extensive annual audits from my bank and I know how audits can go," the mayor said at the conclusion of tonight’s meeting, "I just want to make sure we are acting in an exemplary manner and the audit is serving the people well."
He said the answers he received from Moheet and Perez satisfied his concerns "for the most part. You don’t want to get too nit-picky from the dais."
The one area that concerned me was that Kyle, unlike other cities I have reported about, doesn’t have a dedicated fund set aside for legal contingencies — moneys available to settle nuisance lawsuits that happen, say, when a city owned vehicle rear-ends a private one or a careless motorists crashes into barricades erected by the city. Sellers and City Attorney Paige Saenz told me that Kyle was protected by the Texas Municipal League in situations like those.
Speaking of lawsuits, at the conclusion of the executive session, Mitchell made a motion to authorize Sellers "to execute a settlement agreement related to the property located at 1001 and 1003 Windy Hill Road." This is a zoning dispute in which the city is (was) attempting to prevent the owner from developing an apartment complex on the adjoining properties by denying him the necessary zoning. The owner maintained Hays County guaranteed him the right to build the apartments before his property was annexed by the city. Sellers said details of the agreement should be available by the council’s next meeting April 17.
Mayor Travis Mitchell announced today that he will be seeking a new G zoning designation so that ghettos will be able to locate in Kyle.
"Kyle is growing rapidly," Mitchell said. "We are becoming a major city, but unlike most great major cities we don’t have any ghetto areas. I am convinced this new zoning designation will help us become a destination city for some of the great ghettos of America."
City Planner Howard Koontz said he was open to the idea, although he admitted when he first learned of Mitchell’s plans he thought the mayor was referring to grottos, not ghettos.
Mitchell said the G zoning areas should be located in the areas of the city already known for their density.
"Smart growth says you add density where density already exists," Mitchell said. "Because the area along Cromwell Drive is likely to become a high density ghetto anyway, that would be a good area for our first G zoning designation."
Council member Daphne Tenorio said she adamantly opposed the idea.
"Hey, I’m against anything the mayor is for," she said. "But we must remember we are a rural community and should work like hell to remain a rural community. Therefore I’m countering the mayor’s proposal by seeking a new zoning designation of my own — T for tenant farms. We need far more tenant farmers in Kyle to maintain our rural identity."
Koontz said he was open to the idea, although he admitted when he first learned of Tenorio’s plans he wondered how many people, other than campers, would like to live on tent farms.
City Manager Scott Sellers said he was leaning in yet another direction.
"I think we should develop an M zoning where we can locate businesses dedicated to fostering higher mathematics," Seller said. "If we could accomplish that, the next step would be to have Kyle designated as the Pi Capital of Texas."
Koontz said he was open to the idea, although he admitted when he first learned of Sellers’ plan he thought the city manager was referring to fraternities.
All three proposals brought a swift reaction from the White House.
"All those people in @Kyle should be fired," President Trump tweeted. "I never touched that woman."
