State of the City 2018

Business owners and employees in Kyle heard from Kyle’s mayor about the state of the city. The news was mostly good: this fast growth city is on a positive track.

Mayor Travis Mitchell addressed an audience of more than 200 members and guests at the Kyle Chamber luncheon. He told the audience that the factors influencing Kyle are numerous, complex and intertwined.  

His State of the City speech walked the group through five major points:

• Growth
• Water
• Wastewater
• Mobility
• Community

“Managing growth is not a bad phrase.” Mitchell said. “It clearly represents our most fundamental mandate as a city. But the real question is, how do we manage the growth?”

Mitchell said council filters its decisions through the lens of maximizing the value in each investment — often on a shoe-string budget — to avoid tax increases. However, development brings issues: stress on our roads, our utilities, our tax rate, our debt and our sense of identity.

“Our residents may have moved here because of what kind of home their money could buy, but once they move in … their perspective transitions into caring more about how growth affects their quality of life,” he said.

Residents are frustrated, Mitchell said, with rising tax appraisals and ultimately tax bills, but they also want services that include a safe community, good roads and nice parks.

The solution?

“We have begun looking to developers to help solve the problems they create,” he said. By creating a Residential Style Guide, implementing special taxing districts and working with regional partners, Mitchell said development is going to pay for itself.

With all the growth and development come other strains, such as where to get water for all the homes and businesses. The city learned important lessons back in the early 2000s after a development moratorium spurred by short-term water planning, not a long-term vision for the city’s water needs.

By teaming up with San Marcos and the Canyon Regional Water Authority to form the Hays County Public Utility Authority (now called the Alliance Regional Water Authority, which also includes the City of Buda), the future of water in Kyle is more stable.

“We are only a few years away from providing Kyle with enough water to handle growth for an entire generation,” Mitchell said.

Just as water is critical to growth, wastewater is equally important. A necessary wastewater treatment plant expansion is already underway, with not a small price tag. And since water and waste water infrastructure always precedes new development, Mitchell said, the cost burden for the expansion has the potential to fall on current users until the new developments come online.

“We negotiated several large up-front developer contributions to help take the sting out of the cost of the plant,” he said.

Mitchell said staff also looked for cost-saving measures in the plant engineering design. As a result of developer fees and cost-savings, the city only expects an average $3.54 increase on the average utility bill, down from an originally projected $7.

“Since waste water rates have not increased in several years,” Mitchell said, “this increase is manageable and something I can support.”

Mitchell then addressed what is likely the most commonly heard issue among Kyle-ites: mobility. He said he wants residents to understand that many of the arterial roads in the city were not built to handle the current traffic level.

“Lehman, Burleson, 150, Stagecoach, Old Post Road, Windy Hill and others were built when Kyle had less than 5,000 people,” he said. “We haven’t had enough funds to make major improvements without borrowing money and raising taxes, which we did in 2013 with voter approval.” He added that four of the six roads in that bond are complete and the remaining two, Lehman and Burleson, are less than about two months away from beginning construction.

More good news, Mitchell said, is Kyle has finally grown to the point where it can fund new large road projects without issuing debt or raising taxes. He said partnering with Hays County and regional funding agencies, along with a more proactive approach with developers, will allow us to fast-track certain road improvements.

“We are now in a better financial position to strategically jump-start several new projects simultaneously,” he said. Those projects include:

• Windy Hill Rd. to FM 2001
• Old Post Rd.
• Marketplace extension (to I-35 access road)

But the mayor’s biggest road announcement of the day was the engineering and construction of N. Old Stagecoach Rd. from Walgreens, behind Hometown Kyle to Center St. and then to Rebel Dr.

“This new project will be proposed to council in the upcoming budget,” Mitchell said. “It will take about a year to engineer and another 18 or so months for construction, but all things considered, this is a huge mobility win for Kyle.”

One of his other big announcements was bringing forward plans to begin work on Uptown Kyle, a mixed-use development in Plum Creek Phase II. The development could include sit-down restaurants, boutique retail, destination retail, and Class A office space. He believes the city needs to pursue a development like Uptown that further elevates Kyle’s trajectory.

He said the proposal will ask council to authorize tax increment financing (TIF) — a special taxing tool — to finance public amenities at that location that benefit the city as a whole, such as enhanced streetscapes, plazas, water features, parking structures, decorative lighting and more.

Mitchell told the Chamber audience about the city’s sidewalk repair program, the rail siding project (where the double tracks at Center St. will be moved north) and several large economic development wins for Kyle in recent months.

He also mentioned the opening of Phase I of the city’s first municipal dog park, having one of the largest July 4th fireworks displays in the city’s history and work on a new 10-mile trail that will connect Kyle from east to west.

He also talked about the new Butterfly Garden at Kyle Library, the city’s CertiPIEd branding initiative and the upcoming Pie in the Sky Hot Air Balloon festival.

“My vision is for Kyle to once and for all shed the stigma that we are simply a bedroom community lost in a sea of endless sprawl,” he said. “If we stay the course, we can become a safe and thriving city with great parks, smooth roads, affordable housing, career employment and opportunity for all.”