City Council - workshop

Okay, let me call the order. Point of order. Let me call to order the June 2nd Deer Park City Council workshop. Did anybody sign up for comments?

No, sir.

Moving on to workshop item agenda number one, executive session by authority of article 6252-17. For consultation with city attorney for industrial district agreements at this time, uh, let me recess this meeting. Let me reconvene this workshop and move on to agenda item number two, discussion of issues related to potential handball court at San Jacinto Park. Mr. Stokes or Mr. Kinney, whoever.

Okay, so just to refresh, a few months ago, a couple months ago, I came in to discuss potentially adding handball courts to San Jacinto Park with a couple options. Basically, stand alone, single wall, in a standalone three-wall court. And this is basically the quotes that we received back. Roughly 190 for one wall, 236 for a three wall. It was a term that's a little high at that time. So from there, we were talking amongst ourselves and the city staff, Basically, the plan, we are discussing plans to build a restroom on site at San Jacinto Park regardless. We're doing this regardless. So we started discussing, well, if a standalone handball court is too much and we're already building a restroom, would it be feasible to... as part of the restroom, make one of the walls a handball wall. Would that be feasible? Would it save the city money? How would that look like? Is that even possible? So that's what we went back and did and got that information. So this is what the restroom would look like that we already have planned to build. This is, you know, really close estimate, about $195,000. So the two standalone projects, 195 for the restroom, about 188 for a single wall, totals about $380,000. So this is what we got back from Corworth. Basically, this is a rough estimate of the elevation, what it would look like if we combine the two projects into one. You see the restroom and then the back wall would be regulation 20 by 16 for handball. You see the grill elevation and the left side elevation. What that would look like from the numbers perspective, to the right, that's an overhead bird's eye view. The white box is the restroom. The dark blue box is the handball surface playing area. The light blue is the exterior sidewalk area. It will be fenced in. The total cost for the entire project at $330,000. So what that means is, if we brought the two together, when we spent 195 for the restroom, it would cost about an extra 130,000, roughly, to add the handball. So by combining the two, we would save about $50,000. However, the restroom would look like this. And we would save about $50,000, but the cost specific towards handball by combining the projects would be about $130,000 to $140,000. So I think the last time, this is information that you guys wanted us to go back and look at to put some numbers together. And this is what we have here. I think this is my last slide. So any questions? Do you have an answer for anybody?

Mr. Stokes, what do you need from council tonight regarding this?

Well, if y'all want to move forward with this, let us know. We'll need to budget it and figure out how to fund it. We did meet, the Parks and Rec Commission met yesterday. And they previously looked at it and recommended to council to not do it just because of the cost and the seemingly not too many people that play handball. Kenny did present the same information to them yesterday that y'all just heard. And for what it's worth, their recommendation, again, was to not do it.

How many people are we talking about that they actually think will be playing?

Well, the last time the guy was here, he said they have about seven or eight people.

That's all?

But not all of them live in Deer Park, that I recall.

I don't have any information on that other than what we all have.

When we asked the guy from the Handball Association of Texas, he said they have 400 members in the state.

The whole state, yeah.

So I agree with Parks and Rec. I just don't think it's feasible to spend that amount of money, even if there's 20 of them.

It's a lot of money. Yeah, that is a lot of money.

And aesthetically wise. No, no, no, yes. I agree with the rest of it. Do you want to do a standalone handball or do you want to enhance it with handball?

I just think there's, as popular as pickleball is, that if we ever needed to expand that or wanted to add on, I think that would be maybe money better spent there. Yeah. as I think we're already maxing out the pickleball courts as it is. So I would anticipate that that's probably going to be a need at some point. So you're not in support of it either?

No.

I just think it's way too much money for the little amount of people that are going to use it. I'd rather see it spent somewhere else.

You have what you need. The majority of council doesn't want to do it.

Move forward then with the restrooms, but not the handball department.

OK, sir. That's all.

If I could have one more thing, too. Sure. When they were here back in February or so, my understanding from that conversation was, and it was specifically after the meeting ended, was they had other suggestions. It wasn't just or just build a new one. They had some other suggestions. I've not had any follow-up from them since then. But if they have something else that's maybe more reasonable and something that could be accommodated, I'd be happy to look into it. Kenny would be happy to look into that. Yeah, definitely.

If they have something that's not a lot of money, that would be less expensive. We're not wasting so much money for so few people. I would be interested to hear that.

Any more comments? Questions? Thank you, sir.

That's all the items we have for this workshop. This meeting is adjourned.