By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City council members have approved a resolution to issue $27 million in certificates of obligation to fund major city projects.
Del Rio City Council members approved the resolution during their Jan. 24 meeting.
According to information in the council packet provided by City Finance Director Alberta Barrett, the $27 million would be spent as follows:
- $9 million for drainage projects on Kings Way, De La Rosa Avenue, Railway Avenue, Margaret Lane and miscellaneous improvements to include detention ponds and box culverts
- $7 million for streets and sidewalk improvements to be constructed in coordination with the drainage projects and with the water line replacement project
- $2 million for park improvements to include the Del Rio Community Sports Park/Field of Our Dreams and various other improvements like a splash pad and a skate park
- $4 million for facility improvements in renovating, improving and equipping a city animal care facility
- $5 million for water system improvements to begin funding the automated meter reading infrastructure project and continued funding for the water line replacement project
After City Secretary Mari Acosta read the heading of resolution during the meeting, Mayor Al Arreola asked if there was a motion from the dais.
Mayor Pro-tem Steven Webb made the motion to approve the resolution, with Councilman J.P. Sanchez giving the second.
When Arreola asked if there were questions from the dais, Councilman Jim DeReus indicated he did.
“I have questions about where the $5 million for the water fund is coming from, because when I looked at the agenda on Sunday afternoon, that was the first time that I ever heard about the $27 million. We’ve been talking about $22 million all last summer,” DeReus said.
“Page 145 of the budget book doesn’t mention anything related to water until the 2025-2026 budget, and then all of a sudden, we go from $22 million to $27 million and there’s nothing really in the agenda about water rates, how we’re paying for it,” DeReus added.
Barrett fielded the question.
“Yes, to answer, we’ve been talking about the $22 million for a while. Of course, the funding for that would be spent differently than what we originally budgeted based on those costs. And you’re right. We hadn’t talked about the $5 million for the water projects. This came about and felt like it was a good opportunity to include it with this issue so we wouldn’t have the additional costs for doing another issue here in the near future,” Barrett said.
“And so my thought was, for the $5 million, we have a couple projects that are on the horizon. One is the AMI, the automatic meter reading infrastructure that we had a presentation on. So for the water portion, that was about $5.3 million, so we had that coming, and my thought was to use a portion of this funding for that, using our excess fund balance for another portion of it, and more hopefully, we can apply with the Texas Water Development Board in March for a low interest rate loan, and they look at those types of projects such as that and so they have an interest in funding those kinds of projects.
“But I didn’t want to forego this opportunity in case we didn’t get that funding. We could then go ahead and get started with bringing a contract back to start the automatic meter reading, AMI project, and then still have the money to get started. We’ll still have to use some of our fund balance, but this would get us started,” Barrett said.
“The other portion is with the 2019B Texas Water Development Board, we have borrowed money there, and also the 2021B through the Texas Water Development Board, for the water line replacement project, and that’s a major project (and) those two fundings aren’t going to cover all of it, but there is a need for us to go back and start pretty soon with the next phase, so we’d look at that with the Texas Water Development Board also,” Barrett continued.
“So that was my plan with this $5 million. Yes, we hadn’t really talked about it in prior discussions, but again, I just felt like it would save us money to include this with this issue. It would be paid through the revenues, the rates that we currently have, through our utility fund, our water system, so based on that, and based on the operations of the fund I don’t foresee that we’d have to raise the rates. We would keep it as it is and still fund that principal and interest payments with our existing revenue that we have established. So no plan to raise rates at this points,” Barrett said.
Barrett’s answer led to more questions from DeReus, specifically about excess fund balances, which he has questioned before.
The ensuing back-and-forth between DeReus and the finance director dealt with questions and answers about the excess fund balances in city utility accounts, finally prompting City Manager John Sheedy to note that the city’s financial auditor had approved of the way the city was structuring its funds.
The city manager did promise DeReus he would have the auditors come to address the council about the issue sometime in the future.
The entire council eventually approved the resolution.
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