by BRAD ROLLINS
Bidding is open for design of a new Hays County Precinct 2 office building after city of Kyle officials say they will reclaim the former Wells Fargo building next year for use as a police station.
In January, the Kyle City Council voted to increase the county’s rent from about $4,000 to $7,500 a month, an 85 percent increase intended to serve as a not-so-subtle reminder that the city wants the county to move out of the property they have occupied since 2007. Mayor Lucy Johnson followed up by telling commissioners last month that the city wants to begin moving its overcrowded police department to the building, located next to City Hall on Front Street, by next summer.
“Both jurisdictions recognize the need for us to move – the city so it can effectively use space it owns, and the county so it can accommodate the services it is providing for an increased population in the Kyle and Buda areas,” Pct. 2 Commissioner Mark Jones said.
Jones says he is behind a plan arranged by his predecessor, former Commissioner Jeff Barton, to swap property the county owns on Rebel Drive that currently houses the Precinct 2 constable’s office for land the city will own in the mixed-use Uptown Kyle portion of the Plum Creek development on Kohler’s Crossing.
Projected costs for a Precinct 2 building that will house offices for the commissioner, constable, justice of the peace, adult probation and the tax assessor-collector range from $2.5 million to $4.3 million with Jones saying he is aiming for the lower end of that spectrum. Precinct 2 simply does not have a suitably located office space 13,000 to 15,000 square feet for lease or purchase, Jones said.
“Given the current low interest rates and construction costs versus rents in the $1- to $1.15-per-square-foot range, it probably makes sense anyway to own rather than rent,” Jones said.
As part of his plan, Jones said he would close the tax-assessor collector’s office in Buda, allowing the Pct. 5 constable’s office to reclaim use of its building on FM 2770. Jones said, “If we can make this work out, the constable’s office in Buda would get back space it needs when the tax office moves out. At times there is a long line out the door awaiting tax services there, and that problem should go away by consolidating that office into the new building.”
Opposition to the Precinct 2 building has become a cause du jour for tax watchdogs organized under the banner of the Hays County Citizens’ Budget Project. Former Pct. 2 Commissioner Susie Carter’s role in opposition is bemusing to local officials who recall her plans in 2006 for a 1,400 square-foot-suite for herself in the proposed building, a project that did not strike anyone at the time as particularly austere.
