After a Denton City Council decision on Tuesday, city staff will use money earmarked for future construction on Bonnie Brae Street to help cover millions in taxpayer funding for improvements to the animal shelter and Fire Stations 5 and 6, which have exceeded the amounts voters approved in the 2023 bond.
City staff presented two options to the council Tuesday afternoon during an update on the 2023 bond program:
- Stay within the budget voters approved — $15.85 million for the Linda McNatt Animal Care & Adoption Center and nearly $12.6 million for each of the fire stations, or
Exceed that amount by $4.5 million for the animal shelter and $3 million for Fire Station 5 and $1.1 million for Fire Station 6, in part due to negligence when determining how much money was needed for the improvements.
When determining costs for the bond proposal, City Manager Sara Hensley, Fire Chief Kenneth Hedges and other city leaders said several issues weren’t included, such as:
- Housing firefighters elsewhere while repairs were made to the fire stations.
- Relocating the swift water rescue team to a different station and offering better enclosed protection for the expensive equipment used.
- Additional spacing for future growth of the Fire Department.
- Fixing a flaw in the original design of the Linda McNatt Animal Care & Adoption Center regarding a residential air-conditioning system being installed instead of commercial air conditioning.
- Offering needed improvements to the animal shelter first indicated five years ago in an in-depth consultant report.
“I would say that there is not one thing in here that is not important to have,” Hensley told council members about plans for the animal shelter on Tuesday. “And actually, it is not adding a bunch of space for just animal cages. It’s adding the extra things that are needed to offer a good quality animal services facility. And I get it. It’s $4.5 million. But I will say this … I’m sure you’ve heard it, people are sick and tired of Bonnie Brae being torn up, and this was a solution that … still gets the work done but delays extra work.”
Doing so, however, not only delays construction on one of the final phases of Bonnie Brae — north of Scripture Street — but also includes an additional cost of $2 million for what staff called a “Band-Aid” repair to extend the life of the road by seven to 10 years.
The city staff plans to reallocate $8.6 million in funding from Bonnie Brae Phase 5 and budget it for fiscal years 2033-35, according to Tuesday’s staff presentation.
The presentation states there would be “no increase to the tax rate” and “no additional debt issuance.”
The other bond projects, including additional trails and improvements at Water Works Park, are on track.
The council chose to exceed the voter-approved bond budgets for the animal shelter and the fire stations and delay the road construction — a decision council members Jill Jester and Joe Holland indicated they were reluctant to make.
Holland said it broke his heart to do so, given that he favors repairing streets and roads in Denton. He also said he has received comments from people who have “whined and whined and whined about Bonnie Brae.”
“I actually got an email that had suggested the city simply had said, ‘We can’t fix Bonnie Brae. We’re simply going to give up,’ as preposterous as that is,” Holland said. “But that’s the attitude that is floating around.”
The funding for Bonnie Brae improvements came from the 2019 bond program and sought to widen about 3 miles from Scripture Street to Loop 288 into a continuous four-lane divided road. Phases 1 through 4 are either complete or currently underway, according to the city’s website.
Phase 6 received approval Tuesday night.
Trevor Crain, director of capital projects for the city, told the council they wouldn’t be working on Phase 5 of Bonnie Brae until 2030, and delaying it a few years wouldn’t change their plans to finish it.
“My concern is that we are kicking the can as far as paying for it with what was dedicated to it,” Jester said. “Now we’re saying that we’re going to saddle that for another 10 years.”
The second options approved for the fire stations were as follows, according to Tuesday’s staff presentation:
Fire Station 5, 2230 W. Windsor Drive
Current construction budget: $10.5 million
Estimated cost: $13.5 million
- Addition of fourth bay to accommodate swift water rescue team, boat and associated gear.
- Addition of two dorms for future growth from six to eight.
- Anticipated addition of squad company to respond to lower-priority calls in fiscal year 2027.
- Addition of one officer suite to accommodate future squad company that includes a dorm and office.
- Electrical, mechanical, plumbing increases due to square footage increases.
- Addition of a small police office for officer who serves the district.
- Temporary living quarters and shelter.
Fire Station 6, 3232 Teasley Lane
Current construction budget: $10.6 million
Estimated cost: $11.6 million
- Addition of two dorms for future growth from six to eight.
- Anticipated addition of squad company to respond to lower-priority calls in fiscal year 2029.
- Addition of one officer suite to accommodate future squad company that includes dorm and office space.
- Electrical, plumbing, mechanical increases due to square footage increases.
- Addition of small police office for officer who works within the district.
The Denton Record-Chronicle contacted Dustin Sternbeck, the chief communications officer for the city, on Wednesday afternoon to find out why the $12.6 million voters approved for Fire Station 6 wasn’t enough to cover the estimated cost of $11.6 million for renovations. Sternbeck didn’t respond with an answer by Wednesday evening.
On Tuesday, Jester asked Hedges about the swift water rescue team and the calls received and rescued. Hedges explained that the Denton Fire Department is one of the few in Denton County with a water rescue team.
Hedges said the calls they receive for swift water rescue are “few and far between,” with only about two dozen calls per year and five or six of those leading to a rescue.
“We’re no longer just a fire department; we’re a hazmat department,” Hedges said. “Hazmat, bomb, swift water, the only thing that we do not do is dives, and we’ve got to make sure that our people are there to be deployed.”
Making sure that their teams can deploy is why Hedges said they relocated the water rescue team over the summer from Fire Station 2, off East McKinney Street in eastern Denton, to Fire Station 5, in the northwestern part of the city at Bonnie Brae and Windsor Drive. Hedges said it was a better location and shortened the response time by cutting the time needed to hook up a boat trailer.
Hedges said that when they were estimating costs for Fire Station 5, they had no plans at the time to relocate the water rescue team there.
“So it did come in after the fact, and I apologize for that,” Hedges said. “I’ll own that mistake.”
Three council members — Brian Beck, Brandon Chase McGee and Mayor Pro Tem Paul Meltzer — wanted to wait on the second option for the animal shelter since the city staff plans to present an audit of the shelter to council members.
The animal shelter has had major issues affecting its quality of service since at least 2018, along with several reports by staff and consultants on what to do about them. In one instance this year, a family’s dog was euthanized before the expiration of the 72-hour stray hold, leading to an international outcry after the dog owners’ story went viral on TikTok and Facebook.
To address some of these issues, staff presented several updates to their original plan that had been budgeted.
Linda McNatt Animal Care & Adoption Center
Estimated cost: $13.8 million
Current construction budget: $18.3 million
The proposed additional 10,200 square feet would include, among other updates:
- Enhanced public access and improved animal care by making all adoptable and stray dogs visible to visitors and creating dedicated spaces for public interactions with animals
- A modern HVAC system with 100% outside air exchange to mitigate disease transmission.
- Additional support spaces to accommodate animal care and programmatic needs.
The proposed renovation of 18,400 square feet would include, in part:
- Larger surgery suite, exam rooms and dedicated isolation and outdoor areas for strays and sick animals
- Enhanced spaces to support behavior assessments, enrichment programs, foster coordination and staff operations, including locker rooms, laundry and climate-controlled storage.
- Facilities for animal bathing and grooming and separate holding areas for special cases, like nursing mothers or parvo isolation
Staff estimated the total cost would be $18.3 million, though they only have $13.8 million in the current construction budget.
A large portion of that cost involves replacing the residential air conditioning with commercial, which staff estimated would be about $1.5 million and would require replacing the ductwork with larger ducts and taking off half of the shelter’s roof to do so.
As for why they underestimated the costs, Hensley blamed it on inaccurate numbers from a cost estimator.
Crain offered further details about the cost estimator, telling the council that the estimator had done a lot of the projects and based those costs strictly on square footage.
“A lot of these buildings have different intricacies, different types of facilities that have to go in there, so I think that a good lesson learned is that we need to bring in — in the future — subject matter experts on these different types of equipment to get a better estimate of what needs to happen,” Crain said.
Hensley said for future projects, they plan to improve by hiring consultants or developers with expertise in specific facilities, like animal shelters, to give an accurate assessment of costs “because that is something that we are experiencing in this situation.”
“First, it shouldn’t go without comment, and I know you know it, but that is not a small miss,” Meltzer told Hensley on Tuesday. “I’m just saying it because it should be said. It’s not just an oops. That’s a big miss. I’m just stating the obvious. There is no way to be happy about that.”
Meltzer stressed that they should wait until they receive reports about the animal shelter in January as a way to connect the dots holistically.
“I’d also say as kind of a general comment, the strategy of ‘approving the money and I’ll tell you about the program or the recommendations later’ I don’t find helpful for me in the terms of being able to give good stewardship,” he said.