By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

The 2012 fiscal year marks the city’s inaugural use of its new slush fund for capital improvements, and Tuesday City Council members approved a list of projects developed by staff in city’s various departments that carry a price tag of $1.68 million.

“The intent would be to get these projects in and done within this calendar year,” City Manager Brandon Wade said.

Last year, Wade restructured the city’s budget and created the General Capital Reserve Fund, a fund that pools any revenue the city collects in excess of its yearly budget.

The money is dedicated to capital improvement projects. This year, the fund totals more than $2.7 million, and the city’s departments submitted its laundry list of wants and needs to Council Tuesday with hopes of receiving the funds for some long-awaited projects.

“That’s a lot of money for us to spend, and so I want to make sure we have vetted this as much as possible,” Mayor Jeff Coleman said of the reserve fund’s balance.

Although Council members approved funding for projects ranging from street repairs and park improvements to a new $95,000 phone system for the Pflugerville Police, they pulled two projects from the list that totaled an additional $263,000.

The most expensive item tabled by Council for further examination was a $216,000 parks project to construct a 60-car parking lot for the soccer fields at the southeast corner of Pfenning Lane.

“I have some a real issues with spending almost a quarter-million dollars for those 60 spots, and the reason being is that of that entire street, this location is the least used of any of the parks on that road,” Coleman said.

Wayne Cooper agreed with Coleman’s assessment.

“These soccer fields are just sort of a stopgap for the soccer association, and I think we had some pretty lengthy discussions about how there was plenty of on-street parking there the park can utilize,” Cooper said. “There’s a comment in here about it being dangerous, but when you go up to where Little League football is playing and baseball and that other stuff, it’s a lot more dense and it seems like that’s a lot more dangerous than this area would be.”

The other project Council put the brakes on was the use of $48,000 from the capital reserve fund to install the 10 remaining electric vehicle charging stations the city purchased with a grant in 2011.

“I didn’t think putting these stations up was going to cost us any money,” Coleman said.

Wade clarified that the grant funds paid only for the purchase of the charging stations, not their installation. Wade also recommended changing the locations slated to receive the charging stations because he thought several of them would be underused.

Assistant City Manager Trey Fletcher added that changing the installation locations would also decrease the cost of each installation – a savings that was already reflected in the $48,000 price tag listed on the capital improvements proposal.

Instead of installing two of the stations at City Hall, Wade’s recommendation was to install up to six stations at Stone Hill Town Center, or to install four stations at Stone Hill and the remaining six stations at Lake Pflugerville.

Wade said the cost of the installations was being presented to the Council as a capital improvement because it had originally been included in a far-reaching energy-savings contract that was written in 2007 before Wade’s arrival, and extracting the installation cost from that contract would be a more transparent use of tax dollars.

“We scaled that project back substantially because, quite frankly, I didn’t like the way this was built into the overall contract,” Wade said. “So while you’re seeing explicitly the $48,000 here, you would have never seen it in the other contract… so this is a great deal more transparent.”

“Is there enough of a demand yet to put in that many, or do we just need two? And save the extra 20,000 if they’re $5,000 a piece,” Coleman said. “I fear that the lake is a long way out there and if there’s six of them out there, four of them will never be touched.”

Wade said the city can return any of the chargers that it ultimately decides not to use – an option that remains on the table as the city takes another look at where and how they plan to install the charging stations.

Despite their rejection of two proposed projects, Council members approved the following funds for the following projects, all to be completed within the calendar year:

• $15,000 for additional handicapped parking spaces at City Hall;

• $170,000 for a high-speed internet connection from City Hall to the Department of Parks and Public Works;

• $107,000 to remodel City Hall suites 100, 200 and 300;

• $50,000 for a study of the city’s regulatory codes to overhaul of the city’s zoning and land-use framework;

• $247,000 to construct a new, concrete deck for Gilleland Pool;

• $260,639 for numerous park amenity improvements including new park benches, shade structures, trash cans, water fountains and other similar items;

• $25,000 for a study that identify gaps in Pflugerville’s trail system and prioritizes and price sthe sections to be constructed;

• $50,000 for a study evaluating undeveloped and underdeveloped park sites, with recommendations with cost estimates for improvements that should be made at these undeveloped parks in the future;

• $55,500 to finish construction of Mountain Creek Trail before grant funding from Texas Parks and Wildlife expires July 15; and

• $75,000 for a study evaluating the city’s need for an athletic complex, identifying feasible locations and developing a cost estimates for construction.

For the full list of capitol improvement projects, view the “Attachment” links here.