Bryan ISD and City of Bryan share statements defending stance on future transportation facility site
Published: Thu, 10/06/22
Bryan ISD and City of Bryan share statements defending stance on future transportation facility site
After the school district published a lengthy letter Monday night, the city of Bryan responded Tuesday afternoon with its own statement.
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KBTX
By Adrienne DeMoss and Donnie Tuggle
Published: Oct. 5, 2022 at 3:13 PM GMT-6
BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - Ahead of next Tuesday’s Bryan City Council meeting, the Bryan ISD School Board published a letter that they hope clarifies the continued struggle between the school district and the city concerning the proposed site of a new transportation department facility.
The school district says it has been working with the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission and city staff after acquiring an almost 100-acre piece of land from Blinn College. The original plan was to move the district’s transportation facility to the property that’s on the southwest corner of N. Harvey Mitchell Parkway and Leonard Road. It will be named the Ruby Haliburton Auxiliary Complex. District officials said they were confused and surprised after the Planning and Zoning Commission denied its request to rezone the property.
“In fact, not one person indicated that there would be issues with changing the zoning of this property from higher education to public school use until the very day it was set to be on the agenda for the Planning and Zoning Commission on August 4, 2022,” the letter from the school board said.
But a statement from the City of Bryan says that neither elected city officials nor management approved or endorsed any BISD plans to locate the facility on the portion of the property with frontage to the two major roadways.
“Once BISD insisted on locating the facility on the northeast portion, planning staff worked with BISD on technical aspects of the plan and recommended approval on this basis only,” the city’s statement said.
The city shared its concerns about the location including the amount of traffic already in the area and what the facility would do to surrounding property values.
The school district has requested the city council reconsider their proposal, which was slightly amended, at the upcoming meeting on Oct. 11.
You can read the school board and City of Bryan letters in their entirety below.
October 4, 2022
Bryan Citizens,You may have heard some news in the last several weeks about an issue between Bryan ISDand the City of Bryan. Even if you have been following the news reports closely, you may beconfused by what is happening. We want to help clarify and provide context for our communityregarding the Ruby Haliburton Auxiliary Complex.We are elected as Bryan ISD Trustees. This means that we are entrusted by our citizens to dowhat is in the best interest of the district and the children, staff, and community we serve. Wetake that role seriously. We understand the direct impact our decisions have on the students inour district and the staff who support them. Collectively, the Bryan ISD Board of Trustees havelived in Bryan for 248 years and have had 19 children attend school in Bryan ISD. We aresincerely thankful for the teachers, cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, maintenanceworkers, support staff, administrators and many more who provide support to our educationalfunctions as a district. All are essential to the success of our district, and although some ofthem don’t interact directly with our students, their efforts contribute greatly to our ability toeffectively support and educate our nearly 16,000 students. Whether it be navigating how tofeed our children in a pandemic or keeping our buildings safe during an ice storm, our districtpersonnel work incredibly hard to ensure we are successful. They work in the same way ourteachers, counselors, coaches, and administrators work hard to ensure our students findsuccess in and out of the classroom. Our bus drivers and maintenance crews literally make thewheels go around to get our students to the classrooms so they can learn.We mention all of our staff because their working conditions are at the root of much of thecontroversy you have heard about lately. When we approached our citizens about passing thebond in 2020, among the many bond project priorities, there were three major projects we askedthem to approve. The first two directly impact students with the expansion of classrooms at Rudder High School and a new 5th and 6th grade campus now called Sadberry Intermediate.We are thankful to our voters for supporting those efforts. Those two efforts are well underwayfor completion on time and near budget, assuming there are no additional delays.
Unfortunately, the third project, which was deemed the most important by the BondSteering Committee, has become the focus of the controversy you have read about.
Our transportation, maintenance, custodial, warehouse, records management, and foodservices staff have been scattered across the district in buildings that have simply gone beyondtheir reasonable life expectancy and initially intended use. This is why the new transportation and maintenance building was part of the 2020 bond package approved by the voters. Wesimply can’t continue to invest in repairing facilities that are beyond their useful life and that areinadequate in size to house those essential staff and services for our district. Subject to bondapproval, our district staff began looking for land for our transportation and maintenance facility.That was over two years ago. We looked at every piece of property in the district we could findthat might serve our needs. We examined the property we already owned, property for sale,and property that wasn’t for sale that might meet our needs. Unfortunately, finding the rightproperty for this facility proved difficult. Because of the buses that must enter and exit thefacility, we carefully considered, with the assistance of traffic and design experts, how toaddress entry and exiting safely, recognizing that it takes buses time to turn and accelerate. Inaddition, for the efficiency of a facility housing our bus drivers, maintenance staff, food services,and some of our custodial team who are not housed on campuses, we need access to water,sewer, and utilities. This means that most rural locations would not support our functionswithout spending millions of taxpayer dollars to bring those services to the facility. We also wantto keep these essential functions in an area that is efficient and functional for access and use.The district put contracts on three properties in two years for the anticipated facility andconsidered two properties we already owned. Those properties were deemed unacceptable forthis project, with the last property not pursued after talking with city planners. That discussionwas actually what led us to the current property. It was city administration who suggested welook into buying the property from Blinn College for our transportation and maintenance facility.Blinn College owned the property for about 10 years before deciding to build their new buildingson the RELLIS campus. Consequently, the property had not been on the tax roll in 10 yearsand was previously agriculture exempt. Blinn College didn’t need it anymore, and it fit ourneeds in ways that no other property we looked at did. Only one property, the Blinn Collegeproperty, made it through our feasibility studies. This property is at the corner of North HarveyMitchell Parkway and Leonard Road.The property was not listed for sale, but Blinn College posted it for bid in the Spring of 2021.This means that anyone…a land developer, a citizen, or the City of Bryan, could havepurchased the property at that time. There were no bids on the property. Bryan ISD workedwith Blinn College to purchase the property. We felt this was a win-win-win… Bryan ISD wouldwin because we now had a property for our Ruby Haliburton Auxiliary Complex that will includetransportation and maintenance, food services, custodial, records management, warehouse,and a flexible meeting/training space that the entire district will use. Blinn College would winbecause they could sell the property they no longer had a use for, and the City of Bryan would win because we were not taking property off of the current tax roll and would be serving ourcommunity.While the property was under contract, we worked with our civil engineer, architect, attorney,and City of Bryan planners and administrators to develop the plan for what we named the RubyHaliburton Auxiliary Complex. Ruby Haliburton was a long-time bus driver for the district whoepitomizes the characteristics of staff who will inhabit this building. We presented the plan forthis facility at many open board meetings, City-School collaboration meetings, parent leadershipteam meetings, faith-based leaders’ meetings, and the bond oversight committee. Severalmembers of our City Council and the City’s appointed Planning and Zoning Commission serveon and participate in these committees. At no point did anyone share any concerns about theschool district’s planned use for the property. In fact, not one person indicated that there wouldbe issues with changing the zoning of this property from higher education to public school useuntil the very day it was set to be on the agenda for the Planning and Zoning Commission on August 4, 2022. Although we could hypothesize why the City’s Planning and Zoning Commission has nowsubjectively noted issues with zoning on this property, we find it helpful to keep the followingfacts in mind:
1. By law, a school district must provide for the essential educational functions needed bythe district. This includes purchasing property and building facilities for transportationand maintenance functions. This is supported by law. We don’t mention this to suggestan immediate plan to take legal action, only to point out that the law does support thedistrict’s use of this property to support the identified needs.
2. You may have heard the terms "highest and best use" when the city officials talk aboutour rezoning proposal. What this means is that they want the property zoned forcommercial and retail use in order to increase the taxes generated through property andsales tax. If highest and best use were the only issue to consider, no school facilitieswould be in the city limits. It is part of the reason case law supports school districts inthese types of requests.
3. The City’s own City Planners have supported and recommended approval of the twoplans the district has submitted. Questions about taxes and traffic have been answeredin support of the school district by the City Planners. Their objective analysis tracksevery element under consideration and notes that the district’s plans meet the City’szoning requirements, to the extent that such requirements are even applicable to theschool district.
4. Although the second plan presented to the Planning and Zoning Commission met theCommission’s request for the ability for possible future use as commercial/retail at theintersection, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the Planning and Zoning Commission. ThePlanning and Zoning Commission wants the entire property sold for commercial/retail use. Again, the irony is that there were no bids on the property when it was posted forpublic sale last year, and the school district owns the property and has a legitimatepublic purpose for the property.
5. An email calling citizens to action by a former city official just before the September 15Planning and Zoning Commission meeting suggested that there are traffic concerns withthe proposed school district use of its property. This attempt to thwart the building of thisfacility in the name of traffic concerns is inaccurate. This facility will increase traffic inthe area by 2%. Those same citizens have asked for commercial retail business(es) inthat location, such as a major grocery store. Such a facility would greatly increase thetraffic in the area, with projections above 20%. Traffic doesn’t provide a logicalargument in this case and has been well-studied and supported by the city’s ownplanners and traffic engineers (again, the traffic impact study has been approved by theCity and the Texas Department of Transportation).
6. We have reached a critical point in our construction projects with domino effects now onthe horizon. Sadberry Intermediate is adjacent to our current transportation center atTabor Road. In order to complete the Sadberry Intermediate school project, we need totear down the current transportation center. That means we need to complete the newRuby Haliburton Auxiliary Complex. Delaying the construction on this facility directlyimpacts our students, teachers, and families. Phase 1 of Sadberry Intermediate schoolis slated for opening with 5th grade in August 2023. Phase 2 allows us to expand for 6th grade in 2024. If we are unable to relocate our transportation and maintenance centerby February 2024, the ability to fully open Phase 2 of Sadberry Intermediate Schoolcould be hindered and costs increased.
7. The staff who will be in this facility are essential for the district and support the functionsthat directly impact our children. Our bond steering committee directed us to use bondfunds for this purpose. We have worked with our engineers and architects as well as thecity planners to create a functional and aesthetically pleasing building that works with our budget. Any suggestion that this is just a “bus barn” for staff who are less important thanother staff is unacceptable and not in line with the values of Bryan ISD.
8. “Team Bryan” only exists if we all work together to protect our collective communityinterests. We would hope that our elected city officials would recognize that transportingand educating our students is essential for this mission. The property was alreadyzoned for higher education use. There is no legal requirement for us to request re-zoning prior to closing. If we had known there would be issues with zoning it for publiceducation, we may have recommended a different course. Could we have started thezoning process prior to closing? That may have been possible, but it is not required.Further, we had no indication that there would be anything but support and recognitionby the City that the school district is entitled to use the property as intended. We havepurchased the property with bond funds for our anticipated use, which is a use in supportof our educational mission, as Blinn College planned use for higher education purposes.
9. Because our proposal was denied at the September 15 Planning and ZoningCommission meeting, the district has requested that the City Council consider therequest at the next Bryan City Council meeting on October 11. So far, the city has onlyheard from a handful of citizens who oppose building of this facility. We hope that others who support the school district in our efforts to build the Ruby Haliburton AuxiliaryComplex will voice their concerns over this issue by reaching out to city officials,submitting written comments, and/or participating in the October 11 City Council meetingby voicing their opinions during the public comment opportunity available during theCity’s meeting.The Bryan ISD vision is “
Children First. Always.” We strive to keep this motto at the forefront ofall of our decisions when considering issues in Bryan ISD. While we recognize the role of ourcity officials is to do what is best for the city, we believe we all will benefit when we put children,and those who support them, first in our decisions.Sincerely,Mark McCall, Board President, on behalf of the Bryan ISD Board of TrusteesJulie Harlin, Vice President, on behalf of the Bryan ISD Board of Trustees