Nacogdoches City Council holds special session to discuss funding of ‘top priority’ needs

The Nacogdoches City Council discussed funding for city projects during a special session on Thursday. This comes after a petition stopped the city from taking on debt without voter approval with certificate of obligations.

KTRE
By Brian Jordan
Published: Oct. 27, 2022 at 8:19 PM GMT-6

NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KTRE) - The Nacogdoches City Council discussed funding for city projects during a special session on Thursday.

This comes after a petition stopped the city from taking on debt without voter approval with certificate of obligations.

The city’s budget for the next year was cut in half, leaving the high priority projects unfunded, and led to the city council to examine already existing projects that had been approved for funding.

“It was approximately $43 million worth of projects,” City Manager Mario Canizares said. “Of that 43, 21 of that were from the certificate of obligation. But because the CO’s in essence were stopped it was reduced to about $23 million.”

One of the high priority projects was building a new fire station to replace one that was built in the 1950s and has become a safety hazard, according to Fire Chief Keith Kiplinger, due to sewage rising from the showers, asbestos and the building not being up to code.

Other high priority projects are unsafe playground equipment and bathrooms, which was to be replaced but now might just get demolished, and drainage issues which cause flooding and could damage citizens homes.

City officials say they’ll have to fund these projects by taking away funding for other lower-priority projects like water system and waste water projects which were being funded by ARPA.

Now all the high priority projects and the water system projects will share $8 million in funding through ARPA.

“We had originally allocated for two specific areas, water and waste water projects,” Canizares said. “But now because those monies weren’t available for that what we’re looking at is repurposing for those other projects.”

Canizares also expressed the need for a bond committee to review top concerns for the city and provide feedback to the council.

“They go and do some of the nuts and bolts, some of the deep dives in areas of concern and needs,”

On Nov. 10 the city council will discuss having a bond election to fund more of these top priority projects.