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Dateline:
Colleyville - October 17, 2001 10:41 AM
The
median issue in Colleyville made it back on the council agenda on
October 2, 2001. It’s
been there several times before, but not everyone noticed it.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason why some current council
members are now scrambling to place the blame for them on their
predecessors. Mayor Arp
initially professed little knowledge of the history of the medians,
alternately blaming it on the developer of The Village at Colleyville,
Richard Myers of Realty Capital, and the Texas Department of
Transportation. After State Representative Vicki Truitt stepped in, a second
search of city records eventually turned up some new documentation
previously overlooked.
Highway
26/Intersection Improvement Background
Highway
26 has been the object of much discussion over the years.
Improvements have been ongoing for decades, as they have for most
other thoroughfares in the metroplex.
Some residents can remember when it was a two-lane road and would
be partially closed occasionally for city parades until it was widened
to four lanes. Others
remember riding horses on it when it was little more than a road you
took to get someplace else. The
growth in this area during the last three decades has changed all that
forever.
In
addition to the current plan to widen Highway 26 to six lanes, there are
several other projects, which will eventually mitigate congestion, but
are currently adding to the difficulties drivers encounter when trying
to access Highway 26 businesses.
Several improvements have been completed, but the Glade
Road/Thompson Terrace intersection work and the completion of Pleasant
Run Road behind Applebee’s are still unfinished.
Residents have questioned why the medians were installed prior to
the completion of these projects.
There
was a suggestion that service roads be utilized to access Highway 26
businesses in a 1994 document authorizing the city to apply for the
grant that funded the Glade Road realignment and Village Park/Glade Road
improvements as a CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality) project.
This work enabled the city to remove the double red light at
Glade and Highway 26 several years ago and eliminate some of the
congestion at that intersection. The
idea of service roads was again brought up in a 1999 traffic impact
study completed by Huitt-Zollars. The
survey was ordered by the city to assess the potential impact of the
Villages of Colleyville development prior to re-zoning.
Former Planning and Zoning Commissioner Luann Edwards brought the
service road idea up at the public meeting held September 19th to
discuss the Highway 26 medians, and asked why access to adjacent Highway
26 businesses via service roads was not considered when the medians were
installed. The council
recently refused to re-appoint Edwards to her position on the P&Z
Commission.
On
April 20, 1999, the city council approved the resolution endorsing the
widening of Highway 26 from Cheek-Sparger Road to Big Bear Creek
(basically the entire distance through Colleyville). This project, along with eight others, was submitted to the
North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) for consideration.
Click here to see the
complete list. Approval
of the funding to widen Highway 26 was announced in late 1999.
The city will be acquiring additional right of way and moving
utilities prior to the commencement of the actual widening,
scheduled to begin in 2005 and last approximately two years.
The new roadway will be a six lane, divided boulevard and will
have curb and gutter in lieu of open ditches, and a raised landscaped
median.
In
August, temporary medians appeared almost overnight on Highway 26.
Businesses complained they had no prior notification regarding
the installation of the medians, and several reported losses of sales
due to customers’ inability to access their stores.
The subject came up at the first public meeting of the
Colleyville Boulevard Corridor Committee, and a follow-up meeting was
held to specifically discuss the median issue on September 6th.
Click here to see
LNO’s coverage of these two meetings.
Council
Passes Resolution to Consider Changing Medians
A
resolution for the consideration of the modification or removal of the
medians was unanimously passed at the October 2, 2001 council meeting.
Prior to opening the public hearing on the resolution, Mayor Arp
announced she was going to make a statement giving the history of the
medians. After claiming for
weeks that the council didn’t know very much about the medians, Arp
attempted to place the blame for the medians on the 1998 council.
She started by saying that “in December of 1998 Colleyville’s
elected officials and the city manager at the time, Bob Stripling,
authorized a Huitt-Zollars traffic engineering study that related to
potential improvements on Highway 26”. She went on the say that “the Huitt-Zollars report made
specific recommendations that the city should consider before taking any
action relating to or affecting Highway 26/Glade area.
These medians that now are a problem were devised at that
time.” Click
here to see transcript of comments made at the October 2, 2001 council
meeting.
Local
News Only requested under the Open Records Act all documentation
pertaining to the medians almost two months ago.
LNO’s first article about the medians appeared on August 31.
Most of the articles referenced in today’s article were made
available to LNO readers at that time.
However, a copy of the Huitt-Zollars study was just recently
given to LNO by the city after LNO was contacted and told that
additional information had been discovered that might be pertinent to
the medians. The
Huitt-Zollars study contains a little more information than Mayor Arp
chose to give at the October 2 council meeting, and does not
contain some of the statements she attributed to it in her remarks.
During
the latter part of 1998 the council was considering a zoning request
submitted to the city by Richard Myers of Realty Capital Corporation for
the development now known as the Village of Colleyville.
The original request was submitted on October 16, 1998.
The Planning & Zoning Commission recommended approval of the
zoning change on December 28, 1998, and it went forward to the council.
The first reading was on January 5, 1999, and it was approved
unanimously on January 19, 1999. At
that time Richard Newton was mayor and the council consisted of Steve
Helling, Nelson Thibodeaux, Frank Carroll, Donna Arp and Ginny Tigue.
There was considerable opposition to the zoning change from area
residents, but council members were supportive of the re-zoning.
Realty Capital submitted a “trip generation report”,
detailing the amount of traffic the Village was expected to produce if
the zoning request was approved. The
report was completed by Parsons Transportation Group and was dated
December 22, 1998. Mayor Newton requested that an independent feasibility study
be ordered by the city rather than rely solely on the information
produced by the applicant. This
was the study the city ordered from Huitt-Zollars, which was mentioned
in Mayor Arp’s statement.
The
Huitt-Zollars study was a traffic impact study rather than a full-blown
feasibility study, and it was specifically for the purpose of
determining the impact of the Village at Colleyville. Click here to see a
copy of the complete report.
It stated that “based on the results of this study, the site
under consideration for the Village at Colleyville development is
suitable for the proposed mix of uses, subject to the following…”
and then went on to detail certain criteria.
Among the five conditions listed as being necessary if the zoning
was approved was “the construction of a raised median along
Colleyville Boulevard…”. Although
a median had been mentioned in previous studies dealing with the
eventual widening of Highway 26, the Huitt-Zollars study was
specifically for the Village development.
In essence, the study said that if the council approved the
zoning for the development (the Village) that medians were recommended.
Mayor
Arp went on to say “Huitt-Zollars strongly recommended and emphasized
the need for Colleyville to hold public meetings with our business
owners and I’ll quote “the medians can have a negative impact on
abutting businesses” “. These
statements do not appear in the Huitt-Zollars study furnished to
LNO by the city. Mayor Arp
was contacted by LNO and asked to provide information about the source
for her comments, but she did not reply.
According to the documents the city provided to LNO, statements
regarding holding meetings with businesses about the medians does not
appear until much later, February of 2000, nine months after Arp became
mayor. What one can find in
the Huitt-Zollars study are remarks that support the suggestions made by
some that the medians were constructed solely to benefit the Village
development. Remarks such
as “the potential benefits of constructing a raised median include…
"Greater
opportunity to establish “gateways” into major abutting
developments. In other
words, it would be difficult for a new-comer to Colleyville to
distinguish the major entry
point (gateway) for the Village at Colleyville from all of the
existing driveways and side
streets along Colleyville Boulevard as they exist today.
However, a raised median with a break and a traffic signal at
the proposed entry point would
make such an entry point much easier to identify.”
The
Huitt-Zollars study also included a recommended design for the medians,
calling for three full median cuts and eight left turns, much different
from the medians actually installed on Highway 26 today.
Furthermore it recommended that the “northernmost access
road”, i.e. Main Street, be four lanes from Highway 26 to Pleasant Run
Road.
Mayor
Arp also said “as part of the developer’s agreement Richard Myers
was required to pay $70,000 for the medians, and he was required to hold
Colleyville’s public meetings”.
Again, unless there is a developer’s agreement that was
withheld from LNO’s request for public records, neither of these
statements appears in the developer’s agreement.
What does appear in the agreement is the city’s promise to
recommend approval of the median’s design prepared by Parsons
Transportation Group for Realty Capital to TxDoT.
Mayor Arp signed this agreement twice.
The original agreement was signed June 20, 2000, and a revised
agreement was again signed on July 17, 2001.
The most current developer’s agreement was part of Ordinance
O-01-1284 and was unanimously approved by council.
Click here to
see previous article with attached copies of both developer's
agreements.
After
several citizens at the October 2nd council meeting spoke in
favor of removing the medians during the public hearing, Mayor Arp asked
the city manager, Bill Lindley, to give an assessment of where the city
was with TxDoT. His
comments, as well as those of the citizens, can be read in the
transcript previously mentioned. Arp
then went on to say “the Huitt-Zollars report was date stamped as
being received a week after the council took action on the Village”.
Not according to the records the city gave LNO.
That copy shows it was received by the city via fax at 3:54 p.m.
on the same day the council approved the zoning, January 19, 1999.
Perhaps Huitt-Zollars followed up with another copy that was
received later, but the study saying that the medians should go in if
the Village development was approved was in the hands of the city prior
to the vote. And the
recommendations made in that study regarding the designs for the medians
on Highway 26 were totally disregarded after Arp became mayor in May
1999. All subsequent design
and construction decisions were apparently totally turned over to the
developer.
After
the mayor completed her comments, Councilman Joe Hocutt went into a
lengthy discussion about the charter provision that requires the mayor
to sign all contracts. This
was interpreted by some members of the audience as a diversion to steer
people away from the real issue at hand, which was the medians and how
they got where they are. Hocutt
ended his comments by complaining about “cleaning up behind the
elephants” in a reference to the former council, without acknowledging
that Arp and Tigue served on the council he referred to in his comments.
Councilman
Brad Rice also referenced Mayor Arp’s claim that the Huitt-Zollars
study called for meetings when he said “The idea that the city back in
1998 would get a recommendation from the engineering firm to hold public
hearings and not do it at that time is unforgivable"“ Again, the
study is dated 1999 and does not refer to holding meetings.
Councilman Rice was contacted by LNO and asked for the source of
his comment, but he did not reply.
Councilman Dana Feldman echoed Hocutt’s remarks about
“cleaning up” and also the issue of signing contracts.
She stated “During the course of the year we have found a
number of contracts that didn’t appear to be signed by the appropriate
party, which is why council possibly wasn’t on line and properly
informed." However, Mayor
Arp signed all the contracts authorizing the design and construction of
the medians in 2000 and 2001.
Toward
the end of the discussion Mayor Arp referenced Feldman’s comment about
signatures and said “So we changed that as Councilman Feldman said and
the reason for that is to keep things like this from happening.
It’s a bad situation when the mayor and council is not apprised
of what’s going on, whether it’s because the mayor’s looking the
other way, whether it’s because the mayor didn’t bother to sign it,
but it’s important to know that for very situations like this”.
Apparently whatever changes the council made in the procedure
didn’t prevent the problem. Mayor
Arp signed both developer’s agreements with the Village developer
authorizing the medians, as well as the contract with the state of Texas
which included the construction of the raised medians.
Only
Councilmen John Orrell and Ginny Tigue refused to place blame on others.
Orrell made no statements at all, other than to vote for the
resolution. Tigue expressed
her concern for the damage done to the businesses, apologized for the
situation, and committed to do whatever it took to move forward.
Following Tigue’s comments, Mayor Arp called Richard Myers to
the microphone and asked him to explain why he had held the meetings
instead of the city. Myers
indicated that he had been asked by the city engineer to conduct the
meetings, but that all arrangements had been made verbally.
Part of his response was missing from the audiotape because the
tape was changed while he was speaking.
No documentation authorizing Realty Capital to conduct these
meetings has been found.
Conclusion
and Editorial Opinion
Council
members will do well to pay close attention to this experience.
Perhaps at least one good thing may come of this.
If the medians can be removed or modified it will have served the
purpose to put us on alert that other problems such as this may be
ahead. It’s time to
demand that our elected officials explain why they have been so
single-minded in their attempts to drive all economic development
efforts toward one project. It’s
time to carefully examine how the decisions were made to relocate city
facilities to that location. And
it’s time to demand that elected officials shoulder the responsibility
for their own decisions and actions, stop trying to blame others, and
think about the future of the entire community, not just one or two
developers. Newer members
of the council need to understand that it’s their responsibility to
study the issues, read their packets and understand what they are voting
on. Accepting someone
else’s word for things, or voting without knowing all the facts, is
not being accountable to the citizens.
This
isn’t about what the Village has done or not done.
It’s about leadership and accountability.
To attempt to go back three years and place blame on others is
inexcusable. The opportunities to stop, change or defer the medians have
all occurred during the last two years.
Arp became mayor less than four months after the zoning was
approved, and had been mayor four months when the medians were designed. The meetings that were held with the businesses occurred
during her first term as mayor. Only
she can answer why she and the council didn’t know what was going on.
What may never be known for certain is whether this has all been
due to a failure to follow proper procedures, or if it was deliberately
planned. What is known is
that the credibility of the current elected officials and the public’s
trust in them has been damaged. Efforts
to deny or cover up facts will only further erode public confidence in
our local government.
Click
here to see the chronology of events surrounding the installation of the
medians based on documents provided by the city.
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