Affordable Housing Needs Addressed

Jun 04, 2008 - 15:38:33 CDT.

A new councilman hit on an old theme at Monday night’s regular meeting of the Fredericksburg City Council.

David Pedregon, who was just sworn into office last month, mentioned that the city should address the need for affordable and median-income housing.

“We all know we have a housing problem and we sense that it’s getting worse,” he said.

As a way of providing “outside-the-box” thinking to resolve the housing dilemma, Pedregon proposed that a task force be established.

He said that his research indicated that there were other communities throughout the nation that had similar characteristics to Fredericksburg and that those areas “have had success in dealing with their housing challenges.” Pedregon mentioned that his list of those communities include: Cape Cod, MA; Orlando, FL; Aspen, CO (also, several other mountain resorts in Colorado); Key West, FL; Hilton Head, SC; and Martha’s Vineyard, MA.

“All of these cities depend on tourism,” Pedregon said. “All of them have rising land values, materials and construction cost increases and are all seeing some success in their effort to provide solutions to address a housing shortage for their working class citizens.”

He gave two direct examples of how the affordable housing woes are being felt in Fredericksburg.

First, Pedregon said he remembered the words of former Hill Country Memorial Health System CEO Jeff Bourgeois who indicated that nurses were, in the councilman’s words, “leaving Fredericksburg for better pay and because they couldn’t find affordable places to buy” locally.

In addition, the councilman said that one of the main reasons that the Fredericksburg Chili’s Restaurant closed recently was because the business could not keep managers who, likewise, could not locate housing they could afford.

The first-term councilman went on to say that the city council here “must lead the effort to implement housing policy that pro-actively addresses our housing challenges and implements solutions for the working class citizen of Fredericksburg today and into the future.”

Pedregon added that proper strategies “will give our planning department the policies it needs to direct developers on their projects. The end result of which will be positive housing solutions and present prioritized recommendations.”

Two members he said he’d like to see on the task force would be Gillespie County Economic Development Commission executive director Greg Snelgrove and City Planning Services Department head Brian Jordan. In addition, Pedregon suggested that one city councilman be added (as an ex officio member) as well as five additional members chosen by the council.

He said that the scope of the task force “should include specific recommendations of staff to be qualified in analysis and it should include specific questions to be answered and goals to be achieved.”

Pedregon went on to enumerate four initial tasks for the committee:

•Conduct intense discovery process of the housing problem in Fredericksburg;

•Create a preliminary recommendation set to present at the council’s Aug. 4 meeting;

•Have city council conduct workshops to work through the recommendations set with the task force; and,

•Have city council vote on set of solutions and policy measures at the Sept. 2 council meeting.

In an attempt to get new ideas to help solve the housing situation, Pedregon added that at this time the task force should not contain those people he called “traditional stakeholders” (such as developers, builders and real estate professionals).

Instead, he suggested the group members be composed of “community members with a general understanding of housing issues.”

The councilman said that the city already has the Housing Needs Analysis Report of 2006, as well as other documents, that could used to “accelerate the discovery process of the committee.”

While Pedregon’s suggestions were received warmly by councilmen and the audience members, there were feelings that the timeline he set up might need to be more flexible. Pedregon said he would be amicable to extending some of the time spans if that meant passage of his motion establishing the affordable housing task force.

Changeable Electronic

Variable Message Signs

With a 4-1 vote (with Mayor Jeryl Hoover casting the only dissenting ballot), the council approved a 150-day moratorium on the installation of any Changeable Electronic Variable Message Signs (CEVMS) within the city limits and the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction zone which extends one mile out from the line in all directions.

The five-month time limit would elapse after the city has learned whether or not it has qualified for a Preserve America grant that would allow the city to erect way-finding and gateway signage.

The board had agreed to a 60-day moratorium on the installation of the CEVMS signs at its May 5 meeting in order to allow for review of the sign ordinance.

Councilman Jeff Jeffers said that before he would support Monday’s moratorium he wanted to see a complete review and update of the city’s sign ordinance in the near future.

Saying that he wasn’t sure how the electronic sign issue was related to way-finding signs, local businessman Tommy Segner, who has recently secured an application for a CEVMS, suggested that way-finding signs could possibly be of the electronic variety.

Issuance Of

Limited Tax Notes

Also at Monday’s meeting, councilmen agreed to issue limited tax notes to pay for a $6.2 million waterworks improvement project on the eastern side of the city.

Financial advisor Dan Wegmiller, senior vice president of First Southwest Company, had prepared a listing of several banks and their rates, based on whether or not the city wanted a “callable” feature (whereby the city could pay off the notes at any time).

Councilmen opted for the lowest rate -- 3.34 percent with a “make-whole” (a provision that would allow the city to pay off the remaining debt early) from Bank of America.

Other Council Business

In addition, councilmen:

•Received an update from architects John Klein and Stan Klein regarding the Marktplatz service building process. The two men said that the project was running close to ten percent over the original estimate of between $510,000 and $600,000. Current estimates put the cost now at $616,000.

Several potential cost-cutting measures (such as using fiberglass instead of more advanced insulation and leaving out a fire alarm system) are being left in the project because, in part, their savings would not be significant. Hoover said the city didn’t want to “nickel-and-dime on quality” on the facility.

•Agreed to let the San Angelo-based Alabama Red Rovers re-enactment group use Fort Martin Scott Sept. 13-14. Acknowledging that the Gillespie County Historical Society will no longer be in charge of Fort Martin Scott at some time during the summer, the board also agreed to let city staff make decisions on who gets to use Fort Martin Scott in the future.