Last week, the city of Denton announced it was seeking submissions to select an architecture firm to provide a conceptual design study for a new city hall.
The submissions, city staff wrote in the Nov. 21 request, should include high-level conceptual site and floor plans based on the city’s adjacency study and capacity study.
According to the Nov. 21 request, the scope of work will also include evaluating three possible sites for a new city hall, coordinating with the Downtown Area Plan and parking studies, as well as three options of architectural character examples for staff evaluation. A model of the exterior view of the buildings and a preliminary probable cost is also required.
The deadline to submit is 1 p.m. Dec. 27.
The City Council approved $100,000 in the general fund budget to pay for a city hall concept plan, said Dustin Sternbeck, the city’s chief communications officer.
“The [request for submissions] is for conceptual plans, not a building design, for council discussion,” as part of a future work session, Sternbeck said Monday.
Sternbeck said the three sites being considered are the vacant lot across from the current City Hall, the parking lot next to the current City Hall and the Civic Center parking lot.
The Denton City Council would use a certificate of obligation, also known as a CO, to build a new city hall if a majority of the council approves it.
COs are a funding structure the city has often used over the years, and they do not require voter approval.
City staff reported that Denton’s total outstanding debt for certificates of obligation was $895 million in fiscal year 2021-22, according to the city debt summary report from February.
The latest debt numbers available on the city’s website show that Denton has a total debt obligation of more than $1.8 billion.
This total includes both the $895 million from COs and $427 million in general obligation bonds, which require voter approval, but doesn’t include the recent $309 million bond package that voters approved in early November.
Chief of Staff Ryan Adams said the annual audit for the current fiscal year isn’t complete, which is why the city’s website hasn’t been updated yet with recent numbers.
COs have received criticism due to burdening taxpayers with “long-term, tax-funded debt without adequate citizen input or approval,” according to the Texas comptroller’s office.
Outstanding CO debt by cities, counties and hospital and health districts rose 85% between 2006 and 2015, the comptroller’s office reported in a 2017 report.
In August, Mayor Gerard Hudspeth issued a last-minute plea to his fellow council members to avoid using COs and to consider putting $50 million for a new city hall on the early November $309 million bond package.
Hudspeth said that a new city hall is needed for several reasons, including that city staff have outgrown the current space, which was built in the late 1960s.
“The information before us warrants it going to the voters,” Hudspeth told council members in August. “It gets us out of this cycle of these people on this dais making the universal decision. This is why I’m so passionate about it: If we put it to the voters, then the citizens can say it is a priority to us.”
Council members Chris Watts, Vicki Byrd, Paul Meltzer and Mayor Pro Tem Brian Beck disagreed with the mayor, due in part to the fact that the 40-member citizen bond committee had removed an option to vote for a new city hall from the bond package over the summer.
Another reason, Watts said, is because if voters declined to fund it as part of the bond package, then the city would have to wait several years before they could build a new city hall. It’s why Watts suggested at the Aug. 15 council meeting that they circumvent voters and look at using certificates of obligation to build it.
Voters, however, could still force the new city hall proposal to a citywide vote.
“COs do not require voter approval unless 5% of qualified voters within the jurisdiction petition for an election on the spending in question,” staff from the Texas comptroller’s office wrote in the 2017 report.