There was an agenda item added to Tuesday night’s council meeting to discuss and give direction on the Arts of Collin County Project.
The council may or may not decide to sell the $16.5 million in bonds that they pledged to the Arts of Collin County (ACC) back in 2002. Frisco passed a $200 million bond package that year with a portion of the bonds being sold for ACC.
The Arts of Collin County according to their Web site is “a nationally recognized, innovative, public-private partnership to develop a 100+ acre arts park. Co-owned by the cities of Allen, Frisco and Plano, with operational support by member cities, Fairview and Melissa, the development of the arts park is supported with $57 million in bond monies, up to $3 million in Collin County Open Space Grant funds, and an additional $10 million financial support from private individuals, corporations and foundations.”
The project 124 acre will be located in Allen on SH 121 north of Custer Road. The land that the project will be located on was donated to the ACC.
The project proposed to include Frisco, Allen, Plano and McKinney. McKinney back out of the project. The other three cities held elections and approved their bond packages. The ACC has taken on private fundraising to cover the cost of McKinney withdrawing from the project.
ACC moved forward in November of 2009 with sending out bid packages to get cost estimates for Phase I of the project. Their Web site states that they received 265 bid replies, said a press release on their Web site, with a substantial savings from earlier bids. In March 2009 the project was estimated to cost approximately $86 million and in December they received a bid for $69.9 million.
The City of Allen has taken the next step in moving the project along. “During the City of Allen City Council meeting on February 23, the Council voted to proceed as the guarantor of a line of credit from a financial institution to support the gap in fundraising related to pledges not to exceed $5M.” (http://news.cityofallen.org/2010/02/groundbreaking-in-sight-for-arts-of.html
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Now it is Frisco’s turn to show support and sell their bonds.
The problem is that certain members of the Frisco City Council, such as Patrick Fallon, do not feel like selling the bonds is the right thing to do, because he said the project was originally presented in 2002 as being a four-city partnership and that is no longer the case.
“…a clear promise was made to the citizen’s of Frisco. That promise being that the city would not sell these bonds for the Arts of Collin County unless all four cities participated,” Fallon said in an email.
Council Member Bob Allen feels the opposite of Fallon and said that people were aware that McKinney would not be part of the project when they voted to pass the Frisco bond package in 2002.
“I've heard this misinformation a lot lately. Speaking as someone that lived here and was a part of it at the time, we knew McKinney was out before agreeing to move forward,” Allen said in an email. “It’s a great project for the region and McKinney's decision to not be a part of it should be more disappointing for their citizens than for ours.”
Fallon thinks there are two costs associated with this project that everyone may not be aware of. The first is the cost of the actual project which includes covering the $19 million that he said was supposed to come from McKinney.
“The Arts of Colin County (ACC) now claims over $10M has been raised in donations and pledges.....remember that word, 'pledges'. They do not have anywhere near $10M!!!! They only have, at present, a mere $2.4M on hand. The rest is pledged! There is no telling how much of that pledged money will actually come in. If there is a shortfall, the taxpayers of this city will have to make up the difference; that is assuming of course that our city council voted to sell bonds and commit the city.”Allen stays firm on the fact that the future cannot be predicted at this point and stands behind the project as he said it was passed.
"Everything has the potential to impact the tax rate; if you allow it to do so,” said Allen “It will be up to the City Council and Staff to work through the details. This project is no different than countless other initiatives that could equally have an impact.”
The other cost Fallon thinks is associated with the project that has not been highly publicized is how the operating cost of the facility will be covered. The $69.9 million is just the cost to build the building without ever opening the doors or turning on the lights. Additional expenses will follow yearly to operate the building.Other fundraising options that ACC has outlined on a presentation on their website (http://artsofcollincounty.org/images/PDF/2009-12-11_presentation.pdf) include selling Dedication Bricks which would bring in an estimated $2-$4 million in additional revenue and seat sales could potentially bring in between $3-$5 million. Fallon does not feel like that would cover the operating cost. He calls the ongoing operating expenses of the building a “business loss.” He said ACC stated their estimated loss to be $1.5 annually.
“Now this is important for two reasons. First, this was promised to Frisco voters as a four city project. That means that these annual losses would be divided up between the four municipalities based on their overall population. Well, when McKinney backed out, along with their 125,000 residents, their share was thrust upon the remaining cities,” Fallon said. “This would mean that if this is built, after the doors open, Frisco voters were told in 2002 that we would be responsible to pay the ACC roughly $96,000 a year in taxpayer funds for their business loss. Now, according to documents that the ACC has provided the council recently, this number has mushroomed to between $350,000-$500,000 annually!”
Fallon wants the project to go back on the May 8 ballot to see if this really something that the voters in Frisco want since this is not what was originally approved back in 2002. The item will be discussed tomorrow by the council with a time dedicated to public input.
Allen does not think it needs to go on the May ballot.
“I appreciate that new citizens (and for that matter a majority of the current Council) have moved to Frisco in the past few years, but we should not revote this issue any more than we would the plethora of other decisions that have occurred in the past 10-20-30 years,” he said.
In a phone call Monday afternoon Fallon said that he has received more than 100 emails with “the vast majority in favor of putting it back on the ballot.”
Allen wants to see the project continue to move forward with the city involved every step of the way to ensure that Frisco is getting the best project possible. He said the item was voted on in 2002 and the outcome was that the city stood behind the project.
“Agreements and contracts were developed and executed based on the passage of this citizen approved bond package, which by the way carried an over 2/3rds majority,” Allen said. “ I believe that our word is our only true value. I deplore people that say what you want to hear only to achieve a goal. As a member of the Frisco Council in 2002, I gave my word based on the bond election. I will keep it.”
The Frisco City Council will discuss today, March 2, the project . If a majority of council are in favor of putting it on the ballot they can decide to call another special council meeting later this week make an official action to call for an Election. If the council decides not to have a public vote than they will decide on an alternate direction to take the project with the best interest of the city in mind.
*Editor’s Notes: As of 5 p.m. Monday, March 1, all city council members, the Mayor of Frisco and the ACC Executive Director, Mike Simpson, were contacted to contribute to this story and no one responded except for Council Member Patrick Fallon. This story was updated on March 2 at 10 a.m. with additional comments from Bob Allen.
Photo Courtesy of The Arts of Collin County
topics he covered included the census. He is encouraging all residents to fill out their census form when it comes in mid-March and return it. There are no more long forms and this year’s form is the shortest ever. The census was last taken in Frisco in 2000 and the city has seen tremendous growth since then. It is important that every resident in Frisco is counted because federal funding and grants are based on the population of cities.