Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is poised ask voters to approve bonds this fall to fund improvements to city parks, community centers, fire stations and health clinics, adding hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to a crowded November ballot.
City officials say the size of the bond request has yet to be determined, but a political action committee formed to support the bonds, Lift Up Houston, lists the amount as $490 million on its website.
The referendum is part of the city's latest five-year Capital Improvement Plan, which was unveiled at a City Council committee meeting Tuesday.
The proposed plan calls for $538 million in improvements to city facilities, such as expanded police and fire stations, renovated libraries, miles of bike trails and repairs to city buildings, to be paid for with tax revenues and philanthropic donations.
The plan, known as the CIP, relies on a November bond vote as a key funding source.
An additional $6.7 billion in airport and utility projects would be funded by user fees.
Houston's last bond referendum was in 2012, and the city's capital spending is expected to quickly exhaust the debt voters authorized then.
"It's not a question of going to voters with debt. We will be going to the voters with an investment proposal, a package of community improvements that are important to delivering the kind of services Houstonians expect and deserve," Turner said. "Those improvements, whether they are police or fire stations, libraries or community centers or parks, make our city a better place for all of us to live."
Hoping for repeat of 2012
City Finance Director Kelly Dowe said the size of the bond package has not been determined, but Houston typically seeks enough leeway to last a bit beyond any one five-year capital plan.
The city's 2012 bond vote totaled $410 million. Some worried that voters -- who then faced another $2.3 billion in ballot items from Houston ISD and Houston Community College -- would get sticker shock, but all three items passed easily.
Turner is hoping for a similar outcome this fall.
The mayor has pledged to ask Houstonians to repeal a voter-imposed cap that limits what the city can collect in property taxes. That rule is a lightning rod for conservatives, who spearheaded its passage 13 years ago.
Turner's landmark pension reform bill, which takes effect Saturday, also requires voters to approve the $1 billion in bonds Turner plans to inject into the under-funded police and municipal pensions. Should voters reject it, those groups' substantial benefit cuts could be rescinded, hiking the city's costs overnight.
Adding a general bond issue to the ballot alongside the pension bonds and what amounts to a tax hike is risky, said Jay Aiyer, a Texas Southern University political scientist professor.
"The more measures you put on the ballot, the more confusing it becomes for voters and I think the more attention is taken away from selling the one item that absolutely must pass, and that's the pension obligation bonds," Aiyer said. "It would make a whole lot more sense to make the pension obligation bonds a standalone and push some of these other items off."
Dowe, the city finance director, said the council's desire to avoid delaying key projects in the 2018 fiscal year -- which starts Saturday -- dictate that a bond election be held, whatever the political complications.
"There's no option -- we have to move forward with a bond election in order to fund projects in FY18," he said. "So, the decision is really made on passage of this CIP; by saying, 'We want this to happen in FY18,' in order for that to happen there have to be the bonds behind it."
Alief facility tops funding list
City officials previously had considered holding a capital bond referendum last November, but Turner said he wanted to fix the city's pension mess before asking voters for more spending.
The marquee item in the capital plan is a $57 million multi-purpose facility for Alief that already has been pushed back a year and would be further delayed without the passage of new bonds.
The southwestern neighborhood's community center, at 11903 Bellaire, is aging, and a city study showed the Henington-Alief Regional Library also needs work. The new facility, to be designed in the coming budget year with construction starting the following year, will sidestep costly repairs to both facilities. It also will house the Alief Women, Infants and Children Center, which is leasing its current space.
At the Alief Community Center on Tuesday, kids' giggles at "The Angry Birds Movie" echoed through the muggy gymnasium and mixed with the sound of water pouring off the roof into puddles around the facility's flooded courtyard. Youngsters scurried between the gym and a dance class in one of the low, sprawling structure's classrooms.
Less than a mile down Kirkwood at the Alief library, patrons speaking at least four languages were reading or using the facility's computers.
Alief resident Selina Dargan visits the library weekly and the community center every other week with daughters Haleema, 7, and Samyha, 5. Dargan, who had not known of the city's replacement project, cheered the plan.
"That would actually be kind of cool, because then it's just a one-stop shop," she said. "I like them both. They're doing pretty good with their programs. It gives a lot of options for my kids, especially with their age group, because it's kind of hard to find things for their age."
Renovations at health clinics
New bonds also are needed to design the long-awaited replacement of Moody Library, at 9525 Irvington. That project would use $1.5 million in bond dollars in the coming budget year to design the project, and another $8 million to build it in the budget year that begins next summer. The project almost would double the size of the library, to 12,000 square feet, replacing the 1969 structure.
Bond funds also are needed to replace roofs and renovate the Flores and Mancuso libraries in the coming budget year.
Other projects that would require a bond election to be completed next year or in 2019 include a new Sunnyside Multi-Service Center, renovations to the Denver Harbor and Northeast multi-service centers, repairs to City Hall and its adjacent annex, and renovations at Riverside and La Nueva Casa health clinics.
