June 17, 2011
A 11
Island Moon
Stuff I heard on the Island
Creating Dreams for Island Homeowners
WHITECAP LIQUOR
since 1987
By Dale Rankin It’s an exciting time for our Island. I keep getting asked if Schlitterbahn is really going to happen and my honest answer is I put the probability at about 75%. Mr. Schexnailder told me some time back that planning for the project would be done by the end of June and as you can see from the plans on the front page of this issue that has been finished ahead of schedule. This plan for what amounts to a Schlitterbahn park adjoining an Island riverwalk is by far the best plan I have seen for developing The Island while keeping it resident-friendly and Islandcentric. But we are going to need some help from our city. It is apparent that the promised bridge under SPID (Park Road 22) that would link our canal system with Lake Padre (Padre Sound) is crucial for the development of our Island. But what’s going on with that project is a microcosm of how The Island has been treated by our city over the years.
take 132 bollards for the entire project. At $104,000 that’s $787 per bollard! We should all get into the bollard business! It is madness but it is exactly the type of logrolling and obfuscation that the ISAC has met as they have begun to ask the right questions and force the city staff to produce answers - something that has never been done for our Island. Milking the Cash Cow Islanders represent 14% of the citywide tax base. So Island property owners took on 14% of the $95 million debt from the 2004 bond package - roughly $12 million in bonds plus an additional $2 million or so for debt service on the bonds. We therefore payed out around $14 million dollars and in exchange got one major project which seven years later has not been started but our city can’t pay for and won’t even let us pay for it ourselves.
As in the 2004 bond package which sent $11 million downtown as part of the Bayfront Development Plan, Island Cash Cow the 2008 bonds sent an additional $13 million downSince the approval of the Packery Channel project ten town for Phase 3 of the same plan. That’s a total in both years ago we Islanders have watched as more and more bond packages of $24 million for downtown improveof our tax money has been pumped into downtown in an ments out of which Islanders funded about $3.3 million. effort to put enough lipstick on that pig to make it into It seems only fair that our city should be able to find the a prince. So far it’s still million we need Since the approval of the Packery Channel $4 a pig. to finish the SPID bridge approved by project ten years ago we Islanders have But even as our city voters in 2004. has on the one hand
quietly taken the first watched as more and more of our tax money I’ll even go a step steps toward a masfurther and say the sive expansion of the has been pumped into downtown in an effort TIF shouldn’t have already money-los- to put enough lipstick on that pig to make it to pay for those ing convention center $787 wooden bol(more on that later) the lards either. They into a prince. So far it’s still a pig. city staff is starting to were approved besee our Island Tax Infore the ISAC even crement Fund as a means to fund everything on The Is- existed so the implicit fact is that the money would come land while continuing to use The Island as a downtown from the general fund. And no matter who pays, what Cash Cow. about a bidding process? Surely there is someone out Remember the money in the TIF is a tax on Island prop- there with $786 bollards. erty - it is not new city money - it’s our money that stays on The Island. All the new things going in around Packery Channel these days are funded with our money; raised from the Island TIF. We’re paying for it.
But as we approach the 2012 bond cycle get ready for the Island Cash Cow to give yet more milk. What we may get in return is unknown but if history is an indicator the cow will get more hay than grain. Where’d the money go? I’ll be specific. First, in 2004 voters approved $95 million in bonds. Out of that $95 million and a total of 97 separate projects The Island got exactly two. That’s two more than a dead man. The first was a repaving of Whitecap which according to city records cost just under $600,000. Crews tore up the pavement that had been put in less than a year before and re-did it. The second project was the bridge under SPID. It was funded at $1.4 million. As of this writing it remains the only project from that 2004 bond package that is neither finished or at least in the planning stage. Due to the delays now the bridge will cost an estimated $6 million, if its ever gets built. Five weeks ago city staff told the members of the Island Strategic Action Committee there was roughly $4 million left over from the 2004 bonds due to projects coming in under projected costs and that money could be used to build the bridge that voters approved in that bond package. But when members of that committee pressed for answers last week they were told - bang! - that money disappeared, it’s gone! Spent! But where? And how did it disappear in only five weeks!? No one can say for sure but we can say it wasn’t spent anywhere on The Island and if money for road projects was used before the bridge - a road project - was funded there needs to be an accounting. A bridge too far Now the city’s staff wants the ISAC to approve using $4 million out of the Island Tax Increment Financing fund to pay for the bridge that voters told the city to build with bond money seven years ago. It would almost completely wipe out the funds currently available in the TIF and set a precedent for future TIF robbing. If that’s not bad enough the Staff Obstructionists down at the city legal department - you know who you are say even that can’t be done because it would not be a “public” waterway and so TIF money can’t be used. We can’t use our own Island-raised money to pay for an Island project even if we wanted to. Keep in mind that in that same 2004 bond package $11.6 million was approved for the Bayfront Development Plan. Can you imagine the blowup that would result if the City Legal Obstructionists told the council that downtown development money couldn’t be spent? Once again the downtown pig gets fed while the Island Cash Cow gets milked. Here’s to give credit to some of our current council members who are trying to clean up a mess they didn’t make. Chris Adler and Mark Scott in particular, are working to see if bond money remaining from the 2008 bond election can be used for the bridge, and there seems to be support for it on a majority of the council. But if history is any indicator the City Legal Obstructionists will try to throw a wrench in those works as well. It is now up to our new City Manager to decide who is working for whom down at City Hall. $787 bollards Now jump forward to 2008. Voters citywide approved placing bollards on the beach at what is now called Ellis Beach - the beach in front of the seawall - to keep traffic out. The plan wound through the necessary state bureaucracy and last September was sent to the city to put in place. The result? Now three years later not only has nothing been done but the city staff says they lack the estimated $104,000 it takes to pay for the actual wooden bollards. The initial cost was put at $49,000, then it went to $79,000 and somehow jumped to $104,000. The bollards would only go halfway down the seawall, less than one-quarter of a mile, 1320 feet. So if you put a bollard every ten feet it would
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Please sir, may we have another? Now there’s a move afoot to place expansion of the downtown convention center on the 2012 bond package. The number I’m hearing is $100 million but I’m hoping that is wildly inflated. Hoping. If it is accurate then it means another $15 million or so of Island money going downtown to support a facility there that already eats up $3 million annually of the Hotel/Motel Tax due to its inability to break even. If we drop in another $100 million we can probably get the current annual $3 million operating loss up to around $6 million. Now that’s a world class city baby. The idea that if we build it they will come hasn’t worked on the smaller scale so we’re going to kick it up a notch. If the little hammer doesn’t work get the big hammer. A bill was pushed through the latest legislature which allows cities of over 250,000 population and which have a barrier Island - the bill dropped the population minimum from 1.5 million to 250,000 and was sponsored by local legislators - to wave the hotel/motel tax for hotels within 1000 feet of a Convention Center. Those type of bills are referred to in Austin as Population Bracket Bills and are a way to pass a state law that applies to only one city rather than all the cities of similar population - hence the addition of the “barrier island” requirement.
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It’s not hard to see where this is going. Downtown is going to get its convention center and a hotel built on land owned by a prominent downtown businessman and he won’t have to pay the hotel motel tax giving him a 7-9% pricing advantage over Island hotels. He’s going to use $15 million of Island money to drive business away from The Island. On top of that, a water park adjacent to the hotel would compete with the proposed Schiltterbahn on The Island and - according to what is being discussed wouldn’t have to pay sales tax for ten years so it would have a pricing advantage against is competitor on The Island. If that comes to pass expect a legal fight. That last paragraph is symptomatic of a town that can’t get out of its own way. Is anyone still wondering why our city grew at 11% in the last decade while the rest of the state grew at 25%? A few insiders feed at the public trough and call it progress.
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Let us grow or let us go Over the years there has been a concerted effort by Islanders to avoid an Island vs. Downtown fight if for no other reason it’s a fight we know we can’t win. If the fellows who own the land downtown want a bigger convention center and they want us to help pay or it then that’s what’s probably going to happen.
(361) 949-3337
But in the sake of fairness can’t the Powers That Be around here at least throw a little feed in the trough of the Island Cash Cow every now and then.
THE MEDICAL CENTER +
The Island Cash Cow has been surviving on nothing but small rations of hay for a long time and she’s real tired. She’s getting a little swaybacked from carrying around those milksacks on a thin diet. She needs some grain in her belly. She’s like the cow who the farmer tried to ween from feed. She stopped eating feed all right but she died at the end. If you’re going to keep milking her to slop the downtown pig at least build her a bridge.
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