Streets, public safety and parks are the top priorities for Arlington as the city council asks voters to approve $200 million in bonds.
They’re all projects City Manager Trey Yelverton told KERA News are top priorities for many residents, and Arlington doesn’t expect any property tax increases as a result.
“There’s really a lot of bricks and mortar in what’s proposed,” Yelverton said. “A lot of concrete for streets, a lot of HVAC and infrastructure needs.”
The bond election includes five proposals, with the most funding going toward street rebuilds and maintenance at just less than $137 million.
Public safety upgrades, if the bond is approved, would receive nearly $49 million while money for improvements to parks, city hall and libraries combine for $14.8 million.
Voters will be asked to approve the bond in the May 3 election, along with changes to the city's charter. Early voting runs from April 22 through April 29.
Roads
Yelverton said the city has around 3,000 miles of road, and much of it was built in the 1970s and ‘80s. With the standard life of a road is around 50 years, a large number are coming due for replacement.
“It's just the way things work: you have to take care of your personal health and we have to take care of our infrastructure health and stay healthy as long as possible so we can defer more expensive things down the road as long as possible," he said. "With a lot of streets and a lot of age on streets, we will forever be in the street maintenance and street rebuild business."
The bond will focus on road work along portions of Randol Mill Road, South Collins Street and Pleasant Ridge Road, all major streets with heavy traffic.
That’s one reason Council member Mauricio Galante said investing in concrete streets is important. It’s more expensive than asphalt, but it lasts longer.
Yelverton said roads are one of the things he and other city leaders hear about the most from residents.
“They tend to look at their road, the road to their neighborhood and the road in their neighborhood, but when you have over 3,000 miles throughout the city, when you’re covering 99 square miles, there’s a lot of miles of street that need to be taken care of,” Yelverton said.
Council member Bowie Hogg said street maintenance is a top priority for a lot of residents who reach out to him, too.
“The number one things you hear are streets and public safety,” Hogg said. “They need major repairs and major replacements. We’ve got costs and we just can’t afford to fall too far behind on street repairs.”
Public safety, parks and other improvements
Public safety is the second largest investment in the bond.
With $48.9 million, the city expects to rebuild a fire station, buy new equipment for the fire department and purchase new dispatch radios.
The rebuild of Fire Station No. 6 on South Collins Street near East Timberview Lane is estimated to cost $13.5 million.
Yelverton said equipment for the fire department isn’t cheap either, ranging from $1.5 million to $2.5 million each.
“You’ve got to keep investing in that because we run the wheels off of them serving the public,” Yelverton said. “We’ve got to make sure that we do that.”
Hogg and Galante both said they expect proposals for roads and public safety to receive overwhelming voter support. They don’t expect much, if any, pushback on improvements to parks and libraries, either.
“The libraries are important,” Hogg said. “Libraries aren’t what they used to be. People think of just books. Libraries are meeting spots. Libraries are computers, technology, learning zones, they’re such a valuable add to our community.”
The $2.4 million slated for libraries, pending voter approval, would see updates to four libraries: Ron Wright Lake Arlington Library, Southeast Library, Woodland West Library and Southwest Library.
For parks, $9.3 million would go to improvements at Dottie Lynn Recreation Center, River Legacy Nature Center and infrastructure across the city’s parks and recreation facilities.
Yelverton said these improvements are more along the lines of maintenance. At Dottie Lynn Recreation Center, work will be done on air conditioning.
“Nothing fundamentally adding square footage or anything cosmetic there,” Yelverton said. “It’s really just keeping the facility moving.”
The River Legacy Nature Center will get updates to mechanical and drainage systems while other repairs and updates will be made throughout the parks.
The last $3.1 million in the bond proposals would go to improvements to city hall. Yelverton said that funding would provide updates and maintenance to keep city hall running.
Why a bond?
Cities routinely issue bonds, essentially taking out loans, to make improvements and repairs to city infrastructure. With Arlington’s AAA bond rating, Yelverton said the city gets the best possible interest rates that allow it to issue bonds without raising taxes.
Making repairs and upgrades to a city isn’t like home improvements or repairs, Yelverton said. Where someone could save up money to replace a broken dishwasher or repair electrical work in their home, replacing roads is more akin to buying a new house.
“The question is, I think, really a matter of scale,” Yelverton said. “You won’t pay cash for your house, right? So we’re not going to go pay cash for a brand new road. And when you’re rebuilding Randol Mill, it really is a new road. It’s not, ‘I’m putting in some new gardens today.’ ”
It also makes more sense to use a bond for many city projects because it keeps taxes down. Yelverton, Galante and Hogg all said the city could, in theory, rebuild the roads using the city’s operating budget, but it would mean major tax hikes.
“Do we want to increase your tax rate to be able to cover some of these? We could do that,” Hogg said. “That is an option, but then it starts coming into play that you as a voter, you get to have a say of yes or no to whether we increase that rate but now you look at this and you, as a voter, we’re telling you what we’re going to do.”
Galante said that’s one of the biggest advantages of bonds: more voter control over where the money goes.
The proposals put before voters were chosen by a committee of Arlington residents. The final ask of around $200 million started as around a half billion dollars and was trimmed down by those residents to the five proposals on the ballot, he said.
“Those are the people doing the hard work in there,” Galante told KERA News. “Volunteering for six months, going out there and seeing all the projects to decide which are necessary.”
He also echoed Hogg’s emphasis on the control the bond gives voters. The money from the bonds voters approve cannot be used for something else. If the bonds are approved, those funds are restricted to the projects the voters approved.
“I’m pretty happy with the democratic process that this is,” Galante said. “It’s not like we’re sitting in the office telling people, ‘we’re going to do this,’ or, ‘we’re going to do that.’ No, you guys tell us what to do.”
He added that the amount Arlington is asking for is lower because bond elections will be more frequent, once every three years.
That, Galante said, gives leaders and planners more flexibility to address problems that arise between bond elections while lessening the sticker shock from the price.
From a cost perspective, interest rates do mean the city will pay back more than the actual cost of these improvements.
But with the interest rates Arlington receives on bonds, Yelverton said the cost of the road can be spread out across decades without requiring higher property taxes.
“These are projects that have to be done one way or another,” Hogg said. “I would tell voters, ‘I think we’re providing your more transparency by offering you this bond where you can see what the projects are going to be and make sure we’re focusing on things that are important to voters.’ ”
The money for these improvements will come from taxpayer dollars no matter how they do it, Hogg said. Deferring that cost can help soften the financial impact
When looking at city improvements, and especially streets, Yelverton said bonds spread the cost out across multiple generations.
He pointed to recent work done on Abram Street, which runs through downtown and in front of city hall. It’s a “beautiful street,” Yelverton said, and it was funded through a bond.
“Why should you and I pay the full cost of Abram Street when that street’s going to last 50 years,” Yelverton said. “You want generations who are going to use and appreciate the improvements to spread that cost and that lets us keep our tax rate lower over time and spread the cost across the X-ers and the Z-ers and the Millennials and everybody who’s in town.”
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