Great. We'll kick off the meeting of the Bond Oversight Committee and Brandon, if you want
to introduce the first item. I will. Item A is consider the approval of the draft meeting
minutes of January 16, 2020. I hear a motion. I'll move approval. I have a motion. Anyone
second? I'll second. So we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? And then do
we want to just ask for nays? David, is that appropriate? I think that's fine, yes. Is
there anybody that doesn't approve the meeting minutes? Hearing none, motion passes. Item
B, receive nominations and elect a vice chairperson of the Bond Oversight Committee. Good afternoon.
At the last meeting, we did vote on a vice chair, but because we were only posted for
the chairperson, we brought this item back on this agenda so that you could formally
vote on a vice chair. So obviously could welcome any nominations at this time. I'll nominate
Brandon McCleskey. I'll second. So we have a motion and a second to nominate Brandon
McCleskey as vice chairperson. Any discussion? Anybody opposed? Hearing none, motion passes.
Item C, receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the general
obligation funded capital projects. Great. Well, with this item, you had the items that
we traditionally bring forward at each one of the Bond Oversight Committees, the agenda
information sheet, which had had a status update on each one of our bond program projects
from the 2012, 2014, and 2019 bond programs, and our bond oversight report, the spreadsheet
that walks forward our current budgets for each of those projects, our expenditures,
encumbrances, and the remaining balances. We also have our bond issuance timelines that
have been updated that are included in this item. I know it's been obviously a number
of months since we met due to COVID and changing our format of the meeting. So we have a lot
to go through. So what we've done for this item is we have three separate presentations
for our streets projects, our facilities projects, and our parks projects. So we'll have Todd
Estes go through the streets projects in one presentation, Gary Packin for the parks projects,
and then Scott Gray, our director of facilities, will go through the facilities PowerPoint projects.
Obviously we can take questions for each of those presentations as we go through them.
Or if you have any questions on the status reports or the bond oversight report itself,
we have staff available to answer any detailed questions as well. So unless there's any initial
questions, I'll hand it over to Todd Estes I believe will be first and we can go through
them. Is Todd here yet David?
This is Ethan Cox, general manager of public works. I just got a notice from Becky that
Todd is running a little late and be there about 1145.
Okay. Why don't we skip to Gary then.
Okay Gary Packin director of parks and recreation. Can everybody hear me?
We can hear you Gary. Okay, perfect. All right, so we have a number
of staff here as well that they can chime in, but I'm going to go through these slides
and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Next slide. We've been pretty aggressive
over the past few years with our playgrounds. In 2018, we created a playground replacement
plan that outlines every playground in the park system, what company it is at square
footage, what year it was installed. Typically playgrounds have a 15-year lifespan. So we
use that as the template the follow. Obviously sometimes playgrounds need to replace sooner
based on vandalism. If they're in the sun, they degrade faster and how much use. If they're
in the shade, they may last a little bit longer. So we have playgrounds that are in need of
replacement probably sooner than 15 years. We have some that are older than 15 years
that we could keep pushing forward. It may not need to replace as soon. We have replaced
all the playgrounds in the original bond program except for McKenna. There was some discussion
a few years ago about McKenna being an inclusive playground. With the topography of that site,
we felt that that might not be the best location. And we actually, during our master plan meetings
last year, we met with the community and talked about locations. We talked about Southwest
Park for that inclusive playground and North Lakes Park. And they liked North Lakes Park
better because of its accessibility with a bus route. But regardless of that, McKenna
is under design right now. What you see this blue one on the top is the replacement playground
for McKenna. We have received quotes on that and we're ready to take that to City Council.
So we are moving forward to get that one done. We would like to request in a later item that
the funding for McKenna be redirected to other playgrounds. We do have a lot of our land
dedication and development funds in that park area. So we'd like to use that first and then
reallocate that money for other playgrounds in the park system. And that's another agenda
item for you guys to consider. We are replacing some other playgrounds in addition to the
ones on the bond committee list as well. Joe Skiles being one that's part of that agenda
item and possibly the design for an inclusive play structure, which I can provide in item
E. Next slide. This park improvements, Lake Forest, Milam, they were completed. That money
was actually reallocated to another project for the tennis courts because this was completed
through a donation. Next slide. The South Lakes tennis courts have been, they were designed,
we've been waiting on the completion of the design for the North Lakes tennis center.
We needed to go back and do some additional design on these courts. So that's being done
right now. So there's a slight delay there. So those would get bid out hopefully this
fall. There will be two additional courts there with additional lighting possibly put
on the existing courts pending funding availability. Property acquisition. Last March, we, we were
we began creating a database of land throughout the city that we could use to work from to
identify where we may want to buy land. Right around that same time, city council adopted
a 10 minute walk as a policy for the department. And that initially is giving us guidance to
identify where we need land to make sure that park space is available to every resident
with a 10 minute walk or a half mile. So that's kind of the standard that we're using to help
us identify where we need to, where we need to identify future parkland. So with council,
we went to council last March and provided kind of a philosophy on how we look at land
and how we prioritize land based off of acreage costs, the tree stand, the type of trees on
the property, location to other assets in the city, schools, other parks, trails, those
types of things, and use that to start identifying where that land could be. Then unfortunately,
we hit COVID and we tightened up the budget for the city and that money was kind of put
on hold until further notice. And then just recently we were given approval to move forward
on that. So we are going back to city council in August. We're updating that spreadsheet
and a PowerPoint to provide them a list of properties that we'd like to consider. Some
of those are for purchase and some of those properties are in acquisition through development,
through our land dedication and development process. So some of those will be free to
the city and then some will have to pay. This funding was focused more towards South Denton.
So those are the, that's the area that we're looking at for this funding. Next slide. Southwest
Park Master Plan and Design. Coincidentally, Drew and I were out at the park this morning
with our consultants walking around and driving on four wheelers, exploring the property with
our development, our design team. We had a kickoff meeting earlier this month. We are
putting together a citizen focus group of neighbors, park users, those types of people
and we'll have a number of focus groups throughout this planning process and then we'll also
have a number of public meetings to gather feedback. We're tentatively scheduled to have
our first focus group meeting on August 20th, our first public meeting on August 27th. That
will be a Zoom public meeting. We have $1.2 million for the total cost of the project
itself. We've done some design work and some survey work. The contract for the actual consultant
is under $200,000. So we are asking for an additional $75,000 be redirected from this
project to our Parks, Recreation and Trail System Master Plan. That is item F on your
agenda so we can talk a little bit more detail when we get to that point. Next slide. The
spray ground. This was completed and dedicated in May of 2018. Very heavily used. Unfortunately,
this year we have not opened it yet because of COVID. It's rather small and you can see
the picture of the dedication down there. That's not quite six foot distancing. So we
have not opened up that facility. Staff has built restrooms adjacent to that. That was
part of a CDBG grant and that was completed this spring. Next slide. Trail system expansion.
This obviously has been completed and is heavily used. It passes our new dog park that we opened
back in December. We really actually designed the dog park around the curvilinear nature
of this trail that goes up to the animal shelter. It goes north up to North Point Park and then
it follows Cooper Creek. We are putting together as part of our Parks, Recreation and Trails
master plan system a number of trails throughout the city. This one would carry along Cooper
Creek. So we're looking forward to communicating with the public and getting some additional
feedback on that in the next few weeks. Next slide. The tennis under construction. This
is broken into two phases. The pro shop is under construction. That will be completed
in early 2021. We went back and forth with USTA a number of times in regards to the design
of the tennis courts to make sure that they were on board with everything we did and they
approved the design. We have reached out to them for a grant of $100,000 that would go
towards new facilities construction. So that is pending. We have not heard yet on that
one. But we were released to move forward on this this month as well. And that is going
to be going out to bid hopefully next 30 days. And this is this is the phase two that I just
talked about the bid process. The bond program did call for 12 courts. We've master planned
more than 12 courts so we could grow into that facility. And we did submit that $100,000
grant. One additional thing, we're working with a public art committee to eventually
put some public art within this facility. That has not been commissioned yet. So that's
on the list of things to do with the public art group. Next slide. Waterworks pool. Again,
this was opened and completed along with the concession stand shortly after. This has been
an operations we did not open our pools this year because of COVID. But it's it's ready
to open and for people to enjoy whenever we get post COVID for sure. Next slide. Bell
athletic complex. This project is completed and being used. We are working on a few last
minute additions to that we purchased some additional garbage cans, just park amenity
items, and we're working on signage, we're going to put an arch, as you can see through
the building, you see the playground down there in the bottom picture, there will be
an arch there that says G Roland Vela athletic complex, and then we'll have a historical
sign to let people know who, who Vela was or who Bella is, and what he did during his
career, as well as a decorative plaque on the building, just commemorating the building
itself when it was built and in those types of notifications. So we're putting some finishing
touches on that project. We will have a balance in that project that balance not all of it,
but some of it is bond committee money. We'll plan on coming back to you at the next meeting
asking for that balance to be relocated to another project. Once everything is completed
at Bella. Next slide. Lake Forest Park, Drew, Drew Huffman, our new assistant director actually,
has been working diligently on this project has been challenging, working with the engineering
on it, getting it ready for bid. The goal here is to dredge it and then to do some renovations
on the dam itself, which is the area on the bottom left of your picture. We do have a
trail that traverses on top of that, and then traverses throughout the entire park. The
pond will be dredged. We do have a lot of vegetation that grows specifically in the
heat of the summer on that northern section and starts to fill in the lake. And I'll let
Drew provide some additional information on Lake Forest Park. This is Drew Huffman, assistant
city director, Parks and Recreation. Like Gary said, we have been working very diligently
on this project. We will receive the final plans tomorrow from the engineers. We'll review
those final plans. Also with those plans will come all the specifications for us to be able
to bid that project out. We are waiting on TCEQ and the Army Corps engineers permitting.
It should be in, we expect those any day now. Those were all submitted back in March and
they normally take around 90 days to 120 days to get them completed. So we're really close
to those timelines. And we don't know exactly how COVID affected those two entities, but
we were told that we were anticipating those permits any day. And as soon as we get those
permits and all the plans are signed off, everything's ready to go for this to go to
bid so we can start construction in the fall.
Next slide. Open Space Land Acquisition. This is actually a 2019 bond program. The photo
that's in the slide is the property on Mills. This was purchased in December of last year
through funding from the Tree Fund. It was over $2 million. It's 70 acres, heavily treed
on about 70% of it or so, 75% ish. Lots of, lots of post oaks on that property, a nice
about four acre pond. Drew did go out there and make sure there were fish in there, just
to kind of demo that. So we're looking forward to this being a future park space. As of right
now, it is not open to the general public. There is an access road that you can see following.
It's actually in the top right hand corner of your, the photo, I don't know if you can
see my mouse or not, but it follows the tree line down the McKinney. It's a very narrow
driveway. We probably, probably could use it as an alternate entrance or exit, but we're
probably going to have to come off of Mills at some point in time. So we're looking to
get this on our five year capital plan for master planning, and then we'll need funding
for eventual park development at some point. This would be treated similar to Southwest
Park. This one would be more in nature theme, where we're not going to go through and clear
a tree. We're probably going to work around the trees, put in a lot of trails, the pond
enjoyment for people, and just general outdoor experience. But we'll go through an entire
design charrette with a focus group, as well as getting community meetings, getting input
for what those neighbors that live out there, what they want to see in that park long term.
Next slide. So that's, that's a brief overview on our bond related projects from 2014, 2015.
Love to answer any questions you may have about any of those projects or even anything
else within the park system. Tim? Yeah, I just had a question on timeframe for the completion
of the tennis courts at the North Lakes. So we're not 100% sure yet until we get the
bids back. You know, we were thinking it would be eight months or so, but really depends
on on each contractor, what their timelines are. So we're we're thinking they'd be done
somewhere between, you know, roughly by the end of 21. Okay, so you don't expect construction
to start until early 21, sometime in early 21. That's that's that's ballpark. You know,
if we go out to bid, let's say, just say August 1. It typically by time we go through the
bidding process, the evaluation, get it to council, it's two to three months, and then
we get the contract rolling, get them on site. So it probably be, you know, December, November,
December, before we get them on board. So it could be late summer, early fall of 21.
But we can get you definitely a more detailed timeline once we look at the bids that come
in, in their timeframes. And you but you expect the building to be completed at the first
of the year, but but there would be no occupancy or use of the building until the courts are
complete. Is that right? That's correct. We may use it for staff in the meantime, while
we're shuffling people around trying to keep people separated a little bit. But the building
will be done ahead of the tennis courts. That is great. Okay, thank you. Are there any other
questions from the committee members? Not I've got one on the Gary on the Southwest Park
master plan and design. You talked about needing additional requesting an additional $75,000
to finalize the project. Is that going to be on top of the original 100? Or is that
the 75 that just hasn't been spent yet? So originally, I guess it was about a year or
so ago, we asked the committee for $100,000 to be reallocated from Southwest Park to the
Parks and Recreation Trail System master plan. We've used about 25,000 of that that was being
done in house. We did hire some consultants to provide some minimal input on various items
throughout the park system that utilize some of that 25,000. We were doing that internally
with staff between balance of our existing work. And that it took a lot of time, we had
30 public 3035 public meetings. And we've been working on it slowly. That staff member
left the organization in February, then COVID hit. We have been working on the plan, specifically
the trail section of the master plan with UNT during this timeframe. And we're looking
to have that public meeting in August. We had a pre bid meeting with consultants yesterday
to talk about the master plan. Their their bids are due at the first week of August.
At that point in time, we'll go through interview the top three or four companies. And then
once we select one, we'll negotiate pricing. At that point in time, I know exactly what's
going to cost to finish that for us. So we may not need all of that. I hope we don't.
But just because of timing with you guys meeting before we had that number, I asked for $75,000.
We definitely provide an update to you at the next meeting in regards to what that contract
amount is. And then if we need to bring some of that money back, we could definitely do
that. We're not going to spend it if we don't need it for that project. We don't think with
the scope of the work for the Southwest Park master plan that we need $1.2 million, that
is not going to be enough to do this the construction drawings for that park. We do not have funding
for it. We could possibly use some of that money for a phase section of that park. But
until we get that park entirely master plan, I can't tell you exactly what phases will
be first and what estimated cost would be. Okay. I just had one other question too on
the veil of soccer complex and the monuments, sculptures that are going to be constructed
out there. I was looking in the narrative and it was talking about where some of the
different funding was coming from for those projects. So my question was going to be in
line with had the public art committee identified, have they already identified where they're
going to spend their remaining funds from the bond, I believe the 2014 bond. And I know
that we had noticed, I don't know, maybe 10 to 15 different projects they were going to
spend that money on at different places. Can we, if they've already identified that money,
that's one thing. But if they haven't, does it make sense to fund the sculptures out of
the public art committee funds and keep park funds out of that?
So if I'm understanding correctly, if we could use the park funds first on that project and
then let the public art committee use that money for another project, is that what you're
talking about? Exactly the opposite. Okay. Okay. So as of right now, the sculpture portion
of Vela is being paid for by the public art committee. I believe they have some of that
allocated from bonds and then some money from hot funds that we're going to go towards that
sculpture at Vela. If you scroll back to your picture of the park where you kind of have
that alley that goes between the two buildings, there is a cube right there right now, a foundation
that wasn't solved, that's ready for the public art to be placed. The subcommittee from the
public art committee is going through and identifying the artists that they're going
to be interviewing to do that sculpture. But as of right now, all the art is coming from
the public art group. If the cost was higher than the, I think they have $35,000 allocated
towards that based on the thematic approach that they're providing for that direction
of that sculpture idea, it may cost more than 35. We could consider using some of the Vela
money to assist that if it's going to be more, or they could use some of their other allocated
bond money for artwork.
Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for clarifying that.
You're welcome.
Are there any more questions from the subcommittee before we move on? I'm not the subcommittee
of the committee. Okay.
Great, I will hand it over to Todd Essence to go over a capital projects presentation.
While Todd's coming up, the majority of the presentation that Todd's going to go over
was presented to council a couple of weeks ago, just as a capital projects update to
council as well. And so give that update to them and obviously wanted to come back and
give a very similar update to the committee. And that's going to be something we'll be
updating council on moving forward on a regular basis. I think we'll start off on a monthly
basis going back to council with these updates and obviously bringing them to the committee
every time we meet. Like you're on mute, Todd. If that had happened five times a week, it
wouldn't be often enough to capture how many times it happens to me. So I apologize for
running a little bit late this morning. It's appropriate that we're talking about roads
when I had a car that didn't want to get on one this morning. So here we go. As David
said, we did present the vast majority of this presentation to council here recently
as an update. We are going to council on a monthly basis to update them on the status
of projects. So as we run through this quickly, we just want to start with the 2012 and 2014
bond program. And just to remind some of us, most of us are intimately aware of this one
that in the 2012 bond election, it was primarily a streets bond. You had a little bit of public
art component, but it's $20 million towards roadway or street reconstruction. And then
2014, you've got this list of both in proposition one streets, which a large portion of that,
another 20 to $24 million was street reconstruction. And then you had a myriad of items that were
transportation related, broken out. And then in proposition three, did quite a few drainage
improvements that were also included in that bond. So just to give you a snapshot of where
we are with the 2012 bond program currently, and you'll see these colors pretty thematically
throughout the presentation that blue, that kind of light blue color is always going to
be projects in design, orange construction, pretty obviously. And then if it's completed,
we've grayed it out. We're using the other colors of the rainbow for other things. And
we'll talk about that here shortly. So currently we have about 30 segments to that to the 208
segments that was originally in the 2012 bond program. We have about 30 left in design.
They're being designed currently. We have 31 in construction and 147 complete. And we'll
talk about why that design component is really important here in just a few minutes. The
2014 bond program, you had another 195 segments that were added to the overall street reconstruction
program. We've completed 119. You have 18 that are actively in construction, another
49 in design. And at the time this presentation was put together, we had nine in the bid and
award phase that has since been bid and it's going through the award process. And then
in 2018, we issued CEOs that did two things. It attempted to round out what we understood
the cost to deliver the 2012 and 2014 bond program, the street reconstruction segments.
That's that 4.5 million. At the time, that was our best estimate of what it would cost.
We've talked as a group multiple times about how we're seeing construction inflation, cost
of construction inflation ramping up about 1% per month. And we have not seen that slow
down even through the current economic scenario. It's still paying out to be true. Now we are
starting to see that erode just a little bit as we see some more current projects come
to bid and they're coming in significantly under what we anticipated, but it's still
holding fairly true. And then we added as part of that 2018 CO issuance, we added another
37 segments. Now if you recall, part of that effort was to recognize that in 2012 and 2014,
the focus was on roadways that had OCI's or overall condition index assessment scores
of 40 or less. So you had a lot of segments. Over the summer last year when we were talking
about the 2019 bond, we were talking about that shotgun approach. It was, I don't care
where it is in town. If it's a low on the OCI, we'll go fix it. Well, that left a lot
of segments that were just on the borderline in between segments. It left them undone.
So then we're coming back in successive years and impacting that neighborhood over and over
again. It also was a very myopic view of what's actually in the right away as it was really
focused on street segments without concern or consideration of what's going on with water
and wastewater and some other facets in the infrastructure that we need to make sure we
took into account holistically. So we added another 6.5 million in that 2018 CO issuance
to make sure that we could help get a little further along away from that shotgun approach
and more into that more neighborhood centric approach and get these projects done holistically.
And then just briefly, the 2019 bond program as part of the street reconstruction component,
there was another $70 million authorized by the voters to go ahead and go forward with
street reconstruction. At the time that we were planning, that was 376 segments. We're
still looking at that neighborhood focused approach. But we've also over the last year
been working through a couple of issues, mostly tying in the water and wastewater component,
make sure that we deliver all of those items cohesively and holistically. And that's also
been an issue as we worked through, okay, what does that delivery schedule look like?
And then you throw COVID on top of this and we're struggling to figure out what are we
doing here? And that did put a little bit of a dynamic in this that we had not anticipated.
So we anticipate the next time that this committee meets that we'll have a program, programmatic
plan set out to set for you side to side for you so that you can see how we're actually
going to deliver that 2019 program. One of the things that we did talk to council
about were those cost overruns. And this is that design component of 2012 and 2014, along
with several other factors that we wanted to bring to your attention. We did go back
to council and asked for an additional CO issuance of 8.9 million to complete the 2012
and 2014 bond program. There were a lot of contributing factors to that. And I'm going
to flip to the next slide. We can come back to this later if you have questions. But one
of those drivers, those prime drivers that we ran into was a lot of these street segments
were anticipated to be done through in-house crews or contracts that we already had. And
that pricing was used to develop what we thought we were going to have to have on hand in 2018.
What we saw significantly in 2019 was absolutely there was a lot of variable left in these
projects. And as we had to bid them, not through the traditional contracts that we had used
10, 20, 30 years in the past, but we're up to speed. We're getting these contracts as
they're appropriately as it meets all the requirements of our procurement department
in the state law. We definitely saw some impacts to pricing. Now that was lack of some details
that could have been in those bid packages. And that's absolutely where the design helps
that component. So not incorporating design into earlier bid packages absolutely impacted
where we went last year. That pushed some schedules out. We're currently not anticipating
2012 and 2014 being fully complete until the end of 2022, very beginning of 2023 at the
latest. We also had significant increases in variety of sectors in the market. Plus
the competition for labor in the construction market's been unreal over the last four or
five years. That has definitely led to labor costs going up and overall pricing to go up.
So that's just a snapshot of what occurred between 2018 when we thought we had it fully
budgeted and where we are today. So over time, initially we started with 208 street segments
in the 2012 bond election. That when 2014 came along, it brought us back to 403. And
today we're currently working through that 440 segments. Before I move on to the rest
of these projects, are there any questions that the committee would like to address at
this point? Todd, you'll need to take down the slide there. I think we under the open
meetings act, we have to show whoever is talking to us. Okay. Are there any questions from
the committee? Sure. Go for it, Todd. All right. All right. So we move forward to more
individualized projects and especially related to the bond program. One of the things you're
going to see as a theme on the subsequent slides and in future presentations is a snapshot
of where we are with these projects. So just to kind of lay out the map for you just a
little bit here, you're going to see again that blue is always going to represent the
projects that are under design. If it's in orange, then it's in construction. Now, one
of the things you'll see here is obviously we've got a schedule here at the top that
refers to the years. So while we may be in design, say in May of a year, we're going
to go to construction that same year. So the whole year shows up as construction. It doesn't
necessarily mean we, it's not an intent to nail down timeframes here. It's just to give
you an idea that within that year, that's what's going to happen. Absolutely. We have
those schedules, but this is just for representation purposes. It gives you a better idea of where
we are. If you see a project in purple, it's on hold for construction or maybe on hold
for design. There may be a variety of reasons for that and we can talk through those issues
as we come upon them. This dash blue line right down the middle here, that's just to
give you a frame of reference of where we are in time. So where we are throughout that
year and where that is in relation to the project and its delivery. On the far left,
you'll see the project name, the proposition it was under, as well as here, scope, schedule
and budget, the three legs of the stool for any project. We understand their health of
that project by where we are within those three spectrums. So scope, if you see scope,
schedule or budget with a green dot, that means things are moving forward as expected.
We have no real major issues that we're working through, nothing that would seem to be impacting
either scope, schedule or budget, wherever that lands. If you see it in yellow, that
means there is a risk or an opportunity that staff is working through to resolve. It may
have an impact to the project. It may not. It may just be something that we're working
through embedding, but as quickly as we identify those moving into that yellow category, we
want to bring them to everybody's attention so that you're aware we're working through
those issues, but we haven't fully resolved them just yet. And then anything that shows
up in red, that is a definitive impact. It only goes back to green once we have a full
resolution of that issue. So some of what you're seeing here is the presentation that
we gave to council. There have been a few minor updates, but this is what we presented
to council at the end of June. So just walking through here, and I don't want to go through
every project because if it's in green, then we're proceeding forward as you see here.
This is the schedule that we anticipate and we're not seeing any major issues at this
time. But if you look at the first two, the Quiet Zones projects, there has been some
motion on those here recently. We are about 95% to 100%, depending on the intersection,
complete on design. We're working through the logistics of getting those to construction.
We are waiting on one crossing for UP's approval. And to date, we just have one document that
we're waiting on, which is the update of pricing that they had given to us initially. So as
soon as that moves through the system, we anticipate that to move here in the next 30
days to 45 days. We're working hand in hand with council governments to keep moving in
that conversation with UP and move those four projects along much faster and those four
intersections in that project. There are also in that Quiet Zone package three more projects
that are much further north. We're not pushing those forward as quickly right now, primarily
because we really need to get the middle segment, which is everything from McKinney Street all
the way up to Old North. Those crossings also need to be done before anything's really effective
the further north you get. So we're working through those, but for sure the downtown crossings
and Quiet Zones, that's what we are anticipating to see motion on that project here shortly.
So the next time you see this update, we should have a schedule up there and we'll give you
an idea of where we are on the delivery of it. If I'm looking through these different
projects, I'm going to jump down to the 2020 street bundle. You'll see yellow here. My
apologies. Trying to get rid of a screen that's popped up all of a sudden. That yellow dot
there under schedule is really from a change in an effort to minimize costs. That 2020
street bundle, we were going to send out to design through a consultant contract. That
contract was on the order of two to two and a half million dollars, which was within the
range you would expect for a project that's a 20 to $22 million construction project.
But in an order to save some money and allow some of this money to be pushed to other projects,
especially other street reconstruction projects, we brought this design in house. Now the trade
off with design in house is the cost does come down substantially, about half or less
the cost of what we would send outsourced. But there's a time trade off. We definitely
don't have 50 or 60 engineers waiting to just jump on a design project and get all into
the weeds with it. We have two engineers and four design technicians and it just elongates
the time frame for that design to be completed. So the risk here, why you see it in yellow,
is really driven by the timeline. So it may take us a little longer to design these projects
so that could have some construction cost impacts, but we're working to minimize that
through some other measures. So that's an effort in progress. One of the things I didn't
mention earlier is if you see on the far left here, some of these rows are highlighted in
either orange or a green. Green would mean that it's complete and you'll see that on
a couple of slides here. Orange means we're bidding that project, that project is bid.
This project at the time we went to council was being bid. It has already come in. It's
going to council for award. Next project on this list was Hickory Creek Road phase two.
We do have some budget concerns there. It's more nailing down costs for some unforeseen
utility issues that occurred out in the field once we started construction and then closing
the budget costs for the signal that will go in at Montecito and Hickory Creek Road.
Morse Street is, and there's an item later on in the agenda to talk about Morse, we started
looking at what projects had the highest priority needs to make sure they can continue to go
forward. And obviously West Hickory had the greatest need to really get pushed forward,
but it had some budget constraints. As streetlights were added, as sidewalks were added, then
the drainage component once we got into design, that also needed to be done. That increased
the cost of that project to almost 2.9 million up from what we originally thought of almost
a million dollar project. The thought process here was let's take a look at Morse. Morse
really doesn't have a need to expand as quickly. Now that has changed some and we are working
with the county on that one as they've taken over the former Sallie Beauty building. But
the street itself is actually in usable condition. It still needs to be done. The project is
definitely not off of our radar. We're still pushing forward. We're just looking for avenues
to fund that project. So that's why you see it on hold on the far right. You also see
the schedule and the budget in red. That project is on hold until we nail down where those
funds are coming from to finish out that project. That project also grew from just what was
in the bond program to extending the old two lanes of Morse Street, which is still asphalt,
and redoing the entire stretch from 288 all the way over to Mayhill. So that's some more
of the issues came from as well from a budget side. So we're working through that issue
and we'll have an update soon or the next time this committee meets for sure we'll have
that path forward. And then the Riddell extension at Mingo, if you recall, a couple years ago
we talked about really where we need to focus that money is the design efforts into Mingo
Road as a whole from Bell all the way up to Old North, including Riddell. And then let's
figure out what does that intersection look like at Riddell and Mingo. So the area the
traffic study for the entire area is complete. We're working through the draft comments right
now and finalizing that that will lead into the design phase. So right now we're nailing
down scope as we work through this and we'll be able to give you a better idea where we
recommend that project going and then we can put a schedule to it going forward from there.
Following and if you have this presentation, your backup, you'll see a lot of things we
just talked about on the following page that was just for your reference and we can absolutely
come back to this here in a minute. As we move into proposition three, so we broke this
out a little bit. This is still part of the 2014 bond program. These are those drainage
projects that were in the bond program. You see two of the green. Those projects are complete.
Then you have two up here. Phase one of that downtown storm sewer trunk line. That project
is bidding and we'll be going out to construction this year. It's still on target in all phases.
It's green across, but you've got this phase two where we're running into an issue working
with UP that we do anticipate being resolved here very shortly. Now that we've got council
of governments helping us work through this issue with UP, there's an easement that was
needed to get into that project, get into the railroad right away to be able to put
that project into the ground. There's also a couple of driveways that have to be moved.
We're working through some of the budget constraints that we're dealing with now as we've worked
through the time lag on this. Before I move on to the 2019 bond program, are there any
questions that I can answer at this point? Eric?
Hey Todd. Just a couple quick things. When you talk about Riddell looking at that as
a holistic project, but then you also talked about the quiet zone progress that we've made,
so thank you for that with UP and the cog. I'm assuming, but I'd like to confirm just
that the crossings near Riddell that might be changed as a factor of, or as a result
of the Riddell project would be kind of pushed back on those plans from a funding perspective.
That plan set, having the benefit of us being able to plan this on our own this time, this
is one of the few projects where we've really gotten to stretch our own wings on this. Yes,
the quiet zones would be incorporated into the project. As we work through the design,
we would be working with the railroad to make that happen as well.
Okay. Thank you. Any more questions? Okay. All right, 2019 bond program. So the 2019
bond program, there were three propositions. The one I'm going to focus on is proposition
one, which is the roadways component. Similar to what we've seen earlier, you see the street
reconstruction programs, primarily in purple. The only reason that's in purple right now
is that we're working through that programming piece. So we do anticipate that by the end
of the summer, we'll know what that program looks like, and we'll be able to give you
a schedule. We'll also be able to clear out the yellows and give you an idea of where
that project lands. Sidewalk improvements, schedule and budget. One of the things that
really could be changed is this 2020 block. Since the last time we talked to council,
we have two years worth of construction already designed. So that money's already being put
to work to build sidewalks that were designed in 2018 and 2019. So those are moving forward.
The schedule and the budget constraints, those are really just as we work through the right
away issues. The biggest unknown for any of these sidewalk projects is that temporary
construction easements, as you work with individual property owners and you start working through
what it actually costs to acquire right away where you didn't have it before or you're
working around landscaping or a variety of other things that are out there, it can make
that cost and schedule go up a little bit. It can also contract it depending on who you're
working with. So that's why you see those in yellows. We're working through every one
of those issues as they come up. The Bonnie Bray phase five, you'll see the yellow there
for schedule and budget. That really comes down to the fact that we were looking to reduce
some of the cost incurred by that project by bringing in the design in-house. So instead
of going out and getting another million, a million and a half dollar contract to design
that project, we're designing that one in-house that can have similar trade-offs as we talked
about earlier where because we're designing in-house, there's a limited amount of staff
that can push the schedule out, but we are working to minimize that impact as well. So
we do anticipate overall the budget should stay much leaner on the design side. Now right
away in construction costs, that'll be the number that we're working through. And I think
that is it. Yes. Any questions?
I would add just one thing to Todd's presentation there at the end as we talked about the street
reconstruction program for 2019. And this was indicated in the backup as well. As we're
focusing on closing out the 2012 and 2014 program and issuing that additional eight
to nine million dollars of CO debt next year to close those programs, we are focused now
on design at least for the next two years for the 2019 program. And if you look at the
issuance schedule we have, we have pushed out the issuance one year to extend a year
to the 2019 program from what we considered during the committee process just as we focus
on 12 and 14. But as Todd indicated, we'll be coming back to the committee with more
detailed schedules for each of those. But I did want to make sure that was clear in
the information that was presented.
All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
Now we have Scott Gray, our director of facilities to go over our facilities projects including
the police police projects for the 2019 bond program. So Scott, we can take it away. Kevin
Ann will pull up the presentation.
Thank you, David. And good afternoon, everyone. I am, as David said, the new director of facilities
management have been in the position since just about COVID hit in middle of March. So
I'll do my best to fill in some of the blanks for you today on a couple of projects. The
presentation you just saw by Todd's explanation of the color coding is the same thing I used
in my presentation. So it saves me some time having to explain that. So, Kevin Ann, you
can move to the next slide. Again, we're going to do a presentation on the two bond projects
that are in '14 and '19 for you today. So the first project under the 2014 bond proposition
number two is fire station number three. And again, the same color coding at the top of
the slide there of where we're at and the vertical line of where we're at as well. So
just wanted a couple of things. First of all, the picture on the right-hand side is the
existing facility. And the one on the bottom there is the architectural rendering that
was provided by Kirkpatrick architectural studios of what the new one will look like.
This project is currently in construction. It was awarded to behavior contractors for
the amount of approximately $6.3 million. That construction began in May of 2019. And
as you see by the red dot under schedule, we are behind in the schedule primarily due
to weather delays, extensive amount of rain in the last six months or so that has caused
some delays. There's been a couple of construction related issues as well. It was originally
proposed to be completed in April of this year. It is now looking like it will be October
of this year for that completion of the new building. There's a second phase of this project,
which is actually the demolition of the old station, which will happen just after the
new station opens. That'll include the demolition and then some various landscaping related
issues. So as you notice that the budget dot is yellow as well. If you look at the budget
numbers we have, the total funding for the project, which is some bond fund and some
CO is about 9.5 or excuse me, $9.4 million. We're just under that encumbrances to date.
We believe we're going to be fairly close to that number, but just want to highlight
it. We are at about 80% construction on that project. Don't foresee too many other issues,
but as we complete that project and then get into the demo, hopefully we won't notice any
additional expenditures for this particular project. So very quick update on where we're
at with that one. Certainly everybody's looking forward to getting this building online. The
original building is about 5,500 square feet. You can see it's fairly small. The new building
is nearly three times that at 15,800 square feet, which certainly is necessary to meet
the demands of that particular response location for that facility. So the next is the 2019
bond program and this project, next slide, is relevant to the public safety bond issuance
or proposition one, I believe. This was for the police headquarters renovation and the
police substation and firing range, which is out on vintage Boulevard. There's a couple
of pictures there. I'll show you kind of where it's been. These have been presented to the
council in some cases a couple of times with some various changes and you probably barely
see the notes that are on some of these pictures. That's what was presented to the council.
Just some changes to the exterior configuration of the headquarters there and then some depictions
of some changes to the police substation and the firing range there on the bottom. Where
we're at right now, you can see that everything's green, which is great to be. All these projects
are in that. Right now we're in the design phase. We have received 90% construction documents
and should have 100% construction documents here next month that will allow our construction
manager at risk to work through that, get bids and then provide to the city in the end
of October for council approval our guaranteed maximum price for all three of these buildings.
As you can see right now, we are anticipating scope, schedule and budget are on track. Again,
we're in the early phase, I would say, because the design effort will take us up to that
release in October. We'll then start construction shortly thereafter, November timeframe. And
then all three of these buildings have slightly a different phase, but they'll all be completed
by the second quarter of 2022. Just as a reminder on the budget, the bond issuance was for approximately
$62 million. We've expended to date about $1.5 million and projected about $4 million
for the rest of this fiscal year, primarily finishing off the final design and then starting
the construction phase of this project. I'd be happy to answer any questions I can on
this project. Again, we're excited to get this thing moving. Certainly don't anticipate
any snags at this point, but usually that happens when we begin the construction phase
and start to find any possible unknowns, especially with the remodel on the headquarters building.
And then subsequently the new construction will start immediately thereafter.
Are there any questions for Gary? Scott?
I would add one thing to Scott's presentation. As you saw, the police facility, we're only
issuing the $4 million this year. And the reason we're able to do that and essentially
match up our debt issuance with cash flow is we went to council with a commercial paper
program, but since our last meets, since our last bond oversight committee, which they
approved and essentially what that's functionally allowed us to do is issue that debt when we
actually need the cash flow versus issuing the debt to enter into contract. So if we
didn't have the commercial paper program, it's possible we would have had to issue the
entire $62 million this fiscal year, obviously, which would have put some constraints on our
tax rate. So it's really helped us layer in those issuances moving forward. So you'll
see that on that issuance timeline as well.
There's no questions. I guess we can move on. Is that the end of the?
It is. We can move to the next item if there's no more questions.
All right. Thank y'all for that report. Moving on to item D is receive a report, hold a discussion
and give staff direction regarding the reallocation of project funds from the Moore Street expansion
project.
So each of the three remaining items were addressed during the presentations from both
Gary and Todd in the previous item. So I can surely answer any additional questions you
might have. This first one, as Todd mentioned, is reallocating funds from the Moore Street
project to the Hickory Street project. So if there are any questions, we're here to answer
them or any action that the committee has.
Are there any questions regarding item D from the committee?
Eric?
Yeah, I just wanted to say I'm glad that the Hickory Street project is moving forward and
that we're finding creative ways to get it done. I think that's really important. I did
have one question just with the amount of funding that's moving there. I just wanted
to ask whether that's all street work or if some of that is utility work, how does that
breakdown work for the Hickory project?
The funds that are moving because they're bond funds, they have to be used for streets.
So that portion that's moving will only be used for street. Any of the utility work is
handled in our utility budgets and would be budgeted separately. But especially because
they're bond funds, they're restricted to only streets funding.
Okay, thank you. It just seemed like a lot of money, but I guess it's because the base
is probably so destroyed that it costs a lot to redo it to a deep depth, right?
Yeah, it's a big, big project.
Any more questions on item D?
I'll move to approve.
I'll second.
All right. Got a motion and a second to reallocate the project funds from the Moore Street expansion
project. Any discussion? Any opposed? None. Motion passes.
Item E is regarding the reallocation of the project funds to the Joe Skiles Park playground.
We have any questions on that?
No questions. I'll move approval.
We got a motion.
I'll second. It's Randy.
All right, Randy. So we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion?
Any opposed?
Hearing none, motion passes. Thank you.
Item F, discussion regarding the reallocation of the project funds from the Southwest master
plan. If there aren't any questions on that, I'll entertain a motion as well.
Moved. Second.
We have a motion and a second. Any discussion?
Any opposed? Motion passes.
Thank you all.
David, is there anything else we need to discuss?
The next item would be concluding items. So if we move to concluding items, which would
be a time if there's anything from the committee that you would like to see in particular at
the next committee meeting. If not, obviously we would, as always, bring back those status
reports and we would have any presentations for reallocation of funds and likely bring
a very similar capital projects presentation for sure to give an update on those street
projects.
Susan? Could you next time bring back how the property
tax appraisals are fitting if it's moving the way that we thought it was going to?
Absolutely. And I can just give a quick highlight on that and bring more detail back where we'll
get our certified estimates next week for the next fiscal year. And they are trending
higher than our projections currently. We have a 7 to 8% appraised value increase in
our budget, but those are going to be firmed up tomorrow and then as we move forward. So
we'll surely bring an update of that at the next meeting. That's great.
Thank you.
You can already see Tim saying that we undershot again. I can already read his mind.
I think the one thing, though, and I'm glad you asked that, Susan, I think the one thing
we're a little concerned about is we've gone through and studied trends after the last
few recessions and the appraisal district's usually a year or two behind that. So we are,
we have significantly downgraded our 2021 estimates just based on we think we're going
to be well above our assumption this year. Next year, though, we're pretty sure that
we're going to see that drop a little bit, although it's going to be interesting to see
how they how they handle this. But every time the last few recessions, we've seen a decrease.
In fact, there was a couple of times it went negative in 2008 or nine. I think it was the
last time that happened. So we're monitoring it closely.
Thank you. Any, any, any other requests? Eric?
Yeah, I guess to follow on on that, David, when you bring the report back next time,
I'd like to understand how the 10 percent growth cap on AV for residences factors into
what the AV growth we report is. Does that make sense, such that if AV grows, if the
actual assessed value grows slower, but some properties were capped previously, then the
amount of tax revenue that comes in from those properties would continue to grow, even though
perhaps their assessed value is not growing. That's one of those complications. I'd like
to understand better. I think we have a, I think we have a budget
slide that we're taking to council here. And we are may have already done that to kind of
shed some light on that, even though we're at we're actually presenting effective rate
budget in our initial estimates below it, but the value of the homes is still pushing
out pressure on that. So I think that's a good discussion to have. Does council have
the same questions? OK, absolutely. Yeah, we can bring them.
And then secondly, I recall during the discussion of initiating the commercial paper program,
one of the risks that was highlighted was in a constricted credit market, the convertibility
of the long term commercial paper may be a little bit of a concern. So I don't think
we've run into nearly the credit crisis we had back in 2008. But I'd be interested to
know whether how that market is going right now and if that has any implications on how
we're operating the program. Sure. We'll bring a full finance presentation
to the next one and touch on all those pieces. I would just very quickly make clear that
what we're doing with the commercial paper program right now is using it for appropriation
purposes, but we have no intent to actually issue any commercial paper. So that wouldn't
be relevant to us right now. But I think it's it would be great to kind of give you guys
a full a full scope of what that program is and how we're using it.
And I think we're going through a we have a ratings call. Did we have one recently or
do we have one coming up? Yeah, we just had two ratings calls last week that that both
of those ratings will be coming out here in the next couple of weeks for our debt issuance
metal probably be more key to the conversation than anything. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Anymore
comments from the committee requests. All right. Well thank you everybody for your participation
today. Thanks to Todd and the staff. Appreciate you guys. Your motion to adjourn. I'll move.
Is that a second? Tim, your smile. Thanks, everyone. Thanks. Great to see him.