Economic Development Corp. - Regular Meeting

Thirteenth. Will you please call?

Tara Thompson. Here. Jason Herta. Here. Kathy Murren. Here. Don Austin.

Here.

Kristen Carden. Larry Hammonds.

Here.

Shane Hines?

Here. Item three approval of minutes. Right here motion.

Motion to approve.

I'll second that. Motion from director Herta and a second from Austin. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Item four, since this citizens communication, this is time for citizens to address the board on issues and items of concerns not on this agenda. There will be no board action at this time. Seeing no one, we will move on to item number five, treasurer's report. Mr. Warner.

Thank you, President Hines. Looking at the January sales tax collections, we continue what has been a roller coaster ride of sales tax returns for the fiscal year 2025 fiscal year. Quite frankly, that's where we expect to be over the next couple of months kind of due to the economic uncertainty, not only at the national level kind of trickling down to New Braunfels. Tourism is always a factor for New Braunfels when we get to June and July, but nowhere near as much as it used to be as our economy has grown into a much more diversified reality. And so that seasonality isn't as severe as it used to be.

But again, the January sales taxes, you can see there in your treasuries report showed a 6.3% decline overall. When you take those adjustments out and you select current to current, a little worse, actually 7.6%. As we talked last month, that's on the heels though of what was the largest sales tax payment in New Braunfels history. However, again, you may remember that there was a large chunk of that December sales tax payment that was one time in nature, primarily from an audit adjustment from a major national retailer, meaning that there was audit adjustments in nearly every single city in the state of Texas to the tune of 400 to $500,000 alone in that. So again, not concerned right now, but again, we do expect again uncertainty and a little bit of roller coaster ride moving forward.

Sitting here with four months into the fiscal year, still feeling confident to meet our budget expectations, but we'll certainly adjust that throughout the fiscal year as the picture becomes more clear. Again, we've adjusted those revenues for fiscal year twenty twenty five all the way up to fiscal year twenty twenty nine based on what we're seeing in sales tax as your primary revenue source. As a reminder, I always like to say every couple of months that in fiscal fiscal year twenty twenty eight that large spike in loan repayments is due to a long time scheduled balloon payment from the Veremindi coming in, in fiscal year twenty twenty eight. And not much change to your current commitment projections through fiscal year twenty nineteen. As a reminder, we only incorporate into this table those expenditures and commitments that have been approved by this Board as well as City Council.

So no adjustments at this point. Again, not to be too redundant, but as a reminder, think we as a Board have a policy discussion probably this summer on whether or not the South Castel Phase one project, the Call Street drainage project, which is roughly a $7,000,000 project, if we cash flow that or whether or not we explore a certificate of obligation. At this point, if you were to ask my recommendation based on the commitments that you have on the books today, I think there's enough surplus reserves to cash flow that mitigated debt issuance for that project, but we'll certainly evaluate that as we have more information and that project expenditure comes closer. That tranche of projects that you approved as part of the 2023 BOM project is all but approved and incorporated into your current commitments list. The only exception to that being the downtown right of way enhancements, which I think will come before this Board for formal action in the next several months and might be a slightly larger number than that based on the direction that this Board wants to take with project.

You may remember a presentation that you were given that gave you some opportunities maybe expand the scope of that. And if that is the direction of the Board, we'll incorporate that additional expense into your projections. But again, plenty of capacity to support that based on your revenues, expenditures and surplus reserves. Speaking of that, again, this graph illustrates for you kind of where your reserve levels are projected. And so again, based on current commitments and those revenue projections, which are relatively conservative, still sitting in strong surplus position through at least fiscal year twenty twenty seven. So again, a lot of capacity for things that we were just talking about earlier. With that, happy to take any questions if there are any.

Just to be clear, on that last graph, that dark blue that's reflective of the table right above it.

Yes, sir. Yes, that spike to $15,000,000 right there in fiscal year twenty twenty five correlates to your table right here or roughly $18,000,000 sorry. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Any other questions from the board? I will open up for a public comment. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Warner. Seeing no one, we will move on to item six presentation update on NBEDC funded capital projects. Hello, Mr. McClendon.

Good evening, board. Scott McClendon, assistant director of transportation capital improvements. Here tonight to give an update kind of generally on several of the projects that you all have funded, but then get into a little bit more detail on three of the projects. So we're you're used to seeing this schedule. We put this together for our quarterly updates, to council, but this shows all the projects, that that, Jared just showed as well, that you all have funded.

So several of these have moved into construction. So Common Street, sidewalk improvements is under construction, should be done hopefully in May. Citywide pedestrian improvements phase one, we're tracking a June completion on that project. Alligator Creek Trail West is actually tracking a little bit ahead of schedule. We're hoping that one's done in June as opposed to later in the summer.

The last Tubers exit is the last one, the last big one that's under construction right now. We've definitely we're working through some items on that. We're still tracking that it's going to be done on time, but we're continuing to monitor that one daily as things progress and change working in the river. So to get into the couple of projects, wanted to get into more detail on. The first one was the Zip Family Sports Park.

We gave an update to council at their winter retreat on where the project stands. Obviously, the EDC was a big contributor to making this project happen. Our contractor for the project is Spa Glass. So they're about 81% complete by their billing, and that's through January is the latest information that we have. But as you can see there from one of our drone shots from earlier in the week, they're making lots of progress.

So they got down the remaining asphalt this week. They're they're starting to work on prepping the fields, getting top soil down, getting fences up, wrapping up the maintenance building. We're really making final utility connection. So we're getting close on many of the items. So we expect later this month that they'll be done with really everything that's not related to planting.

So really any landscaping or field planting that is going to push to later in the summer. And the main reason is we're waiting on the reclaimed water from Green Valley Special Utility District. So we have the kind of the completion dates of their projects. So in July, we're expecting to have that reclaimed water with their Phase one project wrapping up, which will allow us to move forward with planting the fields. We looked at lots of different options, just not really economical to use potable water to do the watering in.

And so still able to hit the target of the sports fields programming in the 2026, which is what was communicated to the sports leagues. And so still feel like we can hit that with the delay and it's the best thing for the project. But overall, it's progressing really well. And you can see a lot of the progress even from 10:44 in Cline if you're interested in driving by. Wanted to update on the citywide pedestrian improvements Phase two project.

So this is the project you all agreed to fund design of for about $90,000 and this is really to pick up the last remaining project from the citywide pedestrian improvement packages that were developed with the 23 bond. The other projects were picked up through other projects, sources of funding, some were funded through Ampo. And so this is on Lincoln And Garden from Union to Seguin, filling in gaps, correcting some of the ADA issues that we see along there. Lots of retaining walls in this section that that we have to kinda get through, but heavily traveled section that ties into Union. That's a citywide street project that we're working on wrapping up before summer to the last Tubers exit.

And then ultimately to, you know, Common Street that we're working on, Hinman Island, that's one of the MPO projects. So really just adds in and finishes off kind of the loop around back to Seguin and the future downtown project. So the update on this one is that we're almost done with design. We're progressing well in that. And that the city has identified some ARPA funds to use that were earmarked for transit and mobility to go ahead and fund the construction for this project.

So definitely appreciate the funding to get us to the point where we can know kind of how much we need on the construction side. But that's the update on this one. So we're hoping to get it going sooner rather than later, obviously coordinating with the busy time of year in this area as well to get those pedestrian improvements in. The final project we wanted to update you on was the Northwest Community Park. I don't believe we've ever given you all a good update on this since you all move forward with purchasing the property.

And so we do have we wanted to go into that a little bit more detail for you all to give you kind of an update of where we're at today, where we're headed with the development of the park. So as a reminder, total acreage is about a 145 acres. It makes it the largest park in the city's park system. It was acquired back in April, and it's really a great location that connects into the Alligator Creek Trail. As I mentioned, that that you all are funding construction on that that phase one of the west portion, but Wassa Ranch already has the section built.

Royal Verde already has the section built, connects in with the parkland that the Parks Foundation was holding as well. And so really great connections overall to the neighborhoods in this area and obviously fills in a need, which was really the big push to get this property purchased last year. So since the property was purchased and closed on, we worked through kind of the plan of how we want to about planning out the projects. So we do have a master plan and and schematic design contract with RVI. So we had 16 firms interested in doing that project for us.

So RVI was selected. Part of it was there have many sub consultants that were used to using on other projects, Freeze Nichols as doing all the civil work, including all the drainage work that needs to be done as well as the access as well, which are two of the bigger challenges, and we have lots of familiarity with working with Friesen Nichols. And then also Barry Dunn is on the project team as well, and they're the ones that are doing the parks system master plan right now. So bring some continuity in across those park projects about what this park really needs to be. So we awarded the contract at council on December 9, kicked it off December 16.

And so overall, the project is fourteen to sixteen months is what we're projecting. So it will put us in around this time next year is when we're hoping to wrap it up. In between each one of these blocks, we've got time built in for city review, for making sure we have time to review and provide input. So been working for the last few months on-site analysis that's really getting into doing a property survey, getting into some of the cultural and archaeological research, figuring out some of the drainage constraints, some of the access constraints, really to get a good picture of what all do we have. We wanna know the constraints, the opportunities of the site before we move into the the visioning and and public in engagement portion.

We don't wanna fall in love with a a plan and a use and then only to find out that we didn't check all the boxes from a cultural resource standpoint. So we wanna make sure we're spending the time upfront to do that site analysis well. And then we'll move into public engagement, which is really in conjunction with getting staff feedback as well about what the park needs to be, what it should be, pairing it in with the park master a system master plan as well of the needs for the park system, and then and then engaging with the public on what they wanna see and think that the park needs to be. Then we get into the master planning phase. That's where we're actually designing, coming up with conceptual versions of the park, taking in all that feedback of through the site analysis and then the engagement and the need study.

And then ultimately after that's approved, then we've gotten our contract to move into schematic design. And really the purpose of the schematic design is to get it a little bit further into design where we can get some better estimates in, make sure that there's no critical issues with the design that weren't captured previously, but then really tease us up to future funding discussions. Until we know how much it's going to cost, then we don't really know how much to ask for, obviously. So and then it will also incorporate some phasing ideas as well that we can't don't think we can bite it off all in one big chunk for development. How can we systematically break that up into phases that are manageable both from a project standpoint but also a funding standpoint.

So to date, like I said, working through that site analysis phase where we've completed our tree survey, done the property survey, we're working on getting the archaeological study done. So really really making a lot of progress on kind of getting a better idea of what we have. We're still working through the civil analysis, which is like I mentioned is the drainage components, working in the flood plain, but then also the access. That the figuring out the access to the to the park park and how many access points is a big step to figuring out what this park could turn into and what it can support. So that's a little bit more detail about Northwest Park, and happy to answer any questions on that project.

Sorry, forgot I had this slide too. So working on near term efforts. So this is something Parks is working on right now. So we've got a trail building consultant on board. They're they're about to kick off design with that.

And the the concept was to to install some natural surface trails kinda throughout the park where we can to get get some use. Obviously, getting through the master plan and schematic plan is is gonna take a little bit, but it's also gonna take a while to develop the park out. And so this is an idea to get some trails built out there now that we can figure out some access to get the public access to the site. So the estimation is that we can get about three miles in. So the hope is that we could build those this summer with that trail building consultant that Parks has identified.

So still short term improvements to the park as well. So now with that, happy to answer any questions that you all might have on any of the projects.

Any questions from board? As with all presentations, we will open it up to public comment. Thank you, mister McClellan. Seeing none, we will close public hearing and move on to six b, discussion and possible approval of second amendment to the existing Tito's NBEDC economic development agreement. Mister Jewell.

Thank you, president Heinz. Jeff Jewell, economic and community development director. This is the second amendment to the original economic development agreement with Texas Tito's. Back in 2022, the EDC and city council approved a $550,000 grant that was used by Texas Tito's to install a public water line within the right of way of River Road extended from the from the connection where it terminated to the end of their property. And in in exchange for that, the the company had agreed to certain operational employment taxable value commitments.

The project did run into numerous delays. The first amendment that came to the EDC basically shifted employment taxable value requirements by one year. The company thought that they were gonna be in the building by June 2023. That shifted the the occupancy of the building to June 2024. And so what's before you all denied is the second amendment that would shift their operations start date by 12/31/2024.

As part of the site's development process, they actually had to alter the floodplain and had submitted a letter of map revision in order to get approval from FEMA in order to do that. The city would not let them occupy that facility until they actually receive that conditional letter from FEMA, which it did receive in October 2024. And so after then they were able to occupy the facility and receive their certificate of occupancy. So this amendment would shift their operations start date by 12/31/2024, just to reflect the reality on the ground that the company didn't actually occupy and start operations in there until October about four months later than they had originally anticipated. Any questions?

No. Just point out Director Hammonds is recusing himself from conversation on this topic. Any other comments from the Board questions? We'll be ready for action. All entertained motion. I'd like to move to approve an extension to 12/31/2024 for the original occupancy date, guess. That's how we should phrase it.

Second.

I have a motion from director Austin and a second from director Murren. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously with director Hammonds recusing.

Item seven, executive session, accordance with Texas government code section five five one point zero seven one, the board reserves the right to I'm I'm in open session. A, deliberate issues regarding to economic development negotiations in accordance with section five five one point zero eight seven of the Texas government code. One, project Nemo. Two, project Ellie. Three, project Shoot.

Four, project Bovine. Five, Northeast Lakeview College. Six, headwaters of the Comal. Item b, deliberate and consider the purchase exchange lease contract terms due diligence of that or value of real property in accordance with section 551.072 of the Texas government code one a dash one five four survey dash three thirty four H foster acres, point nine four two, 1.169, 1.14, one point zero and two point four three seven. And that we will go to executive session at 05:22PM.

We