26 Oct Brownsville advances $27M improvement plan, housing bonds and traffic signal upgrades

Brownsville city commissioners took the first formal step Oct. 20 toward borrowing up to $27 million for city projects, voting to publish its notice of intent to sell certificates of obligation. The same night, they approved housing bonds for an affordable apartment rehab and a contract to upgrade aging traffic signals.

Certificates of obligation are a type of city borrowing that doesn’t need voter approval. City Manager Alan Guard said the proceeds would cover design work, construction and equipment buys tied to the 2027 capital plan commissioners signed off on earlier. He expects the sale to happen in January or February. According to The Brownsville Herald, the borrowing would fund projects in eight city departments.

Under the process, the city has to publish the notice in a local paper, print it again the following week and post it on its website for a 45-day period. Commissioners are expected to take the issue up again in mid-December, when they would set the terms the city must follow when it sells the certificates.

The city’s financial advisor said about $18 million of the borrowing would be repaid from the property tax rate and about $8.8 million from landfill revenue, with property taxes pledged as backup. The advisor said preliminary numbers assume a 5.35% interest rate, while the city would expect about 4.85% if it sold today, leaving a half-percentage-point cushion. The advisor also said interest rates have climbed in recent months, and that savings from refinancing some older city debt, which looked promising in July, have shrunk as a result.

Planned spending by department:

• Landfill: about $8.8 million, the biggest share, covering the development of Landfill Cell No. 6 as well as a concrete pulverizer and a compactor.
• Engineering and Public Works: about $7.9 million, with much of it going to traffic signal infrastructure and to swapping detection loops for radar. The department would also buy heavy machinery for street and drainage upkeep.
• Fire and Emergency Medical Services: roughly $3.7 million, which would go toward a plan to replace fire engines, a downtown fire station, a brush truck and cardiac monitors.
• Information Technology: $2.2 million to upgrade the city’s finance and administrative software and give staff stronger financial reporting tools.
• Multimodal Transportation and Mobility: close to $1.3 million to pay for Safe Streets for All trail projects and the city’s Intelligent Transportation System.
• Planning and Redevelopment: a little more than $1 million for work downtown and for historic preservation.
• Facility Maintenance: $500,000, including heating and cooling improvements and other repairs at the animal shelter.
• Parks and Recreation: $150,000 for the Brownsville Beautification Committee’s work.

Separately, the commission backed a resolution that lets the Brownsville Housing Finance Corporation sell as much as $25 million in tax-exempt bonds for multifamily housing. The money would pay for a major renovation of Tropical Gardens at Boca Chica, an affordable rental complex with 158 units that the Housing Authority of Brownsville owns.

Housing authority CEO Carla Mancha said the complex had been identified as needing extensive rehab and that the project depends on 4% housing tax credits. She said a hearing on the bonds in late August drew no comment. The authority’s attorney, David Iwin, said the bonds must be tax-exempt to qualify for the credits and that the city would not take on any financial obligation by approving them.

The commission also awarded the Levy Company a contract worth over $1.3 million to replace and upgrade aging traffic signals, with a 112-calendar-day term once work starts. Crews will replace controllers at 14 intersections, update vehicle detection at 19 and add GPS antennas at 15, at signals along Price Road, US 77 and Boca Chica and Ruben Torres boulevards. City documents say the GPS timing will help signals recognize vehicles and respond to real traffic levels, which should cut needless waiting. The Texas Department of Transportation is putting up $756,000 in grant funding, and the city is paying the remainder.

Additional items on the commission’s agenda:

• Military Highway rezoning: The commission gave first-reading approval to rezoning 54.397 acres at 1001 Military Highway from agricultural to single-family residential. A planned development designation allows smaller setbacks and lots as small as 4,300 square feet, versus the usual 5,000.
• Southmost Boulevard used car lot: A permit for a lot at 2034 and 2044 Southmost Boulevard also cleared first reading.
• Airport Zoning Board: An ordinance that would change the board’s makeup was postponed after staff asked for more time to research it.
• Coffee Road drainage: The commission authorized the city to use eminent domain to acquire a roughly 20-foot strip of property for Phase 2 of the project.