Erika and Matt Lafata's email on 3/1/10 to the Frisco City Council asking them to allow Frisco voters to decide the Arts of Collin County fate
(Below is an email we received from Frisco City Council Member Pat Fallon. If you live in Frisco (Collin AND Denton Counties) and pay taxes – this effects you directly. After you read this, please email the city council members listed below to ask them to okay putting it back on the ballot in May. Time is of the essence – tomorrow each council member casts his vote on whether to let Frisco voters decide to continue the Arts of Collin County project.)
To my dear and much appreciated friends and neighbors,
I ran for Frisco city council last year with one overriding theme to the campaign… to be a fierce advocate for the taxpayer. I have a serious dislike for government officials on all levels that are all too often very generous with YOUR money. And thanks to active, concerned citizens like you I was humbled to be elected by a wide margin. I am, to this day, deeply honored by those results from last May and rest assured that I have, and will always, follow through on my pledge to be a vigilent steward of your tax dollars. In fact, better stated, our task is to invest your tax money so that we could have a flourishing city, with great amenities and keep taxes very low. We unfortunately had a tax rate hike in September of last year and I was one of the three council members that voted in the minority to not follow that path. And now here today we have yet another matter that, if passed, would raise your taxes yet again. The matter that the city council will discuss this coming Tuesday the 2nd of March at 7:00pm relates to a project called The Arts of Collin County. I want to point out that our friends in Frisco Denton County (all 40,000 of them) will still have to pay for this if the bonds are sold, so please don’t be fooled by the name. I’d like to provide you with a bit of background information on the project and what has happened recently and why I’m emailing you about this.
Back in 2002 Frisco put a bond package that totalled around $200 million dollars. A part of that, $19 million, was for what they referred to at the time as an Arts District. It’s now known as the Arts of Collin County and, if it’s ever built, will be located in Allen, Texas. Back in 2002 this project was described and sold to the citizens of Frisco in the following way: All four cities (McKinney, Allen, Plano & Frisco) would have to pass their respective bond packages or this project would be dead in the water and would not go forward. As it happened, McKinney voters rejected the bond in a close vote. In Allen 45% were opposed and in Frisco 34% were against. Those are rather high totals against when considering that nearly all of the other bonds were passed with upwards of 90% support. But be that as it may a clear promise was made to the citizens of Frisco. That promise being that the city would NOT sell these bonds for the Arts of Collin County unless all four cities participated. This is very important because there are really two sets of costs to this project. The first is the capital expense to build it. $19M from each city. When McKinney backed out, we were suddenly $19M short on the capital funding. The propents off this projects then decided they could make that portion up from private fundraising. They rejected calls from many quarters to revote on this as a three city project, which it became once McKinney backed out. The Arts of Colin County (ACC) now claims over $10M has been raised in donations & 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 actual 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.
The second expense to the project is the ‘ongoing operating expenses’. This is a euphemism for BUSINESS LOSS. The ACC freely and openly admits that this project is not economically viable and can not pay for itself. It will lose money every year. THEIR estimate is about $1.5M 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. FRISCO VOTERS NEVER VOTED FOR THAT! 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 anuually!!!! And without the benefit of a crystal ball to tell us what the future holds, I fear that this $500,000 number could be even higher!
So what does this all mean to you, the faithful taxpaying citizen of our great city? Well, there has been a great deal of pressure put on this council over the past few days to vote to sell the $16.5 million dollars in bonds right now. There is some rush to do it now for some reason. We’ve waited eight years and we’re told by a very small special interest that it’s time to sell these now because ‘construction costs will never be this low again’. They cite the fact that they thought the project would cost $85 million to build and now it’s down to just under $70 million. Of course our city’s revenues have taken a serious turn for the worse but that inconvenient truth is ignored by some. An analogy would be, ‘Hey I’ve always wanted a 10,000 square foot home! I better buy it now because it’ll never be cheaper than it is today!” First of all, if most of us did that we’d wind up broke! Secondly, how does anyone know what the future holds. Construction costs could easily fall further. If could be much cheaper to build this project in the future.
Getting back on point, when you boil it all down what we have here is a classic example of government not keeping its word. Frisco voters were told that they could have an Arts Hall for $19M and there would be three other cities that would chip in. If all three don’t chip in, then don’t worry, we won’t do it. It wouldn’t make sense to. And now they still want to build it! We are breaking our word.
I ask you this, please support my efforts to get this very important matter back on the ballot! We can do this. It only requires four votes of the city council and we can vote on this project for what it is now, a very expensive three city deal. The taxpayers of Frisco deserve nothing less. You can do this by emailing the council and the mayor and ask them to vote to put this back before the voters for the May 8th, 2010 municipal elections. Please email the council and also encourage others to do so. Please ask for fiscal restraint and responsibility. What is happening in Washington can and does happen at the local level all too often. It’s now time to stand up and be heard and say ‘Not here, not on my watch!’.
jcheney@friscotexas.gov
sjohnson@friscotexas.gov
dprince@friscotexas.gov
bcrowder@friscotexas.gov
ballen@friscotexas.gov
mmaso@friscotexas.gov
pfallon@friscotexas.gov
The other side has been encouraged to send us emails and we’ve received them for the past few days now. We need to hear from you as well.
I have included a myriad of factual talking points and please feel free to use some, all or none of them. If you’re pressed for time please just include a one or two sentence email letting the council and mayor know your thoughts on this matter and on a potential tax hike. If at all possible please attend the city council meeting this Tuesday night at 7:00pm and fill out a blue card to register your feelings (and you can also use it to speak…up to 5 minutes…if you’d like).
Here are some interesting talking points on the project:
–Priorities. We have bond authorizations for Police, Fire, Roads, Library Annex (most likely to be built in DENTON county), Parks & Recreation and of course the Arts. All of these aforementioned priorities are more important that the Arts and yet we will skip all of those, not selling those bonds and sell $16.5 million for the arts now in a recession. This is irresponsible, horrible timing and shows no fiscal discipline.
–This was sold to the voters as a four city deal. It was promised that we would never sell these bonds if all four cities didn’t approve their respective bonds. All four did not pass their bonds. So why are we moving forward any way?! Arrogance? Personal interest or agendas? Why!?!? PUT THIS BACK TO THE VOTERS!
–With McKinney out, the operational expenses for Frisco’s share has mushroomed. We were told in 2002 that we would be responsible for roughly $96K annually in operating expenses once the doors opened. Now were told (and these are figures from the ACC) that it’s more like $500K. Not even close.
–We are obviously in a different economy than we were 8 years ago. This is the height of loose spending to do this project now. We need to focus on necessities not niceties.
–FACT….If we vote to sell these bonds you’re taxes will go up!!!!!!!! We will be forced to raise your taxes to fund this project. And the overwhelming majority of Frisco Lakes residents I’m guessing are on fixed incomes. Enough!!! (by the way this project alone will account for an increase of 2.0 per $100. Last year’s tax increase for everything was less at 1.65 per $100
–Who legally owns the land that the ACC will be built on? They claim they do and it’s worth $22M. Only problem with that is that they couldn’t even secure a line of credit for $5M. The city of Allen did that for them. What banks wouldn’t loan $5M when you could secure that with $22 in land? There are serious issues with even who owns the property.
–2/3 of current Frisco residents, the ones that will have to pay for this project, never got the chance to vote this project up or down. It was eight years ago and our population has doubled in size, while a good portion of the folks that lived here then have moved. Let us have a say for a project that could cost $35 million over twenty years.
–We do have many beautiful Sports facilities. Why not have one for the Arts? Well, because all of the Sports facilities were funded completely different from this. We had major developers put in a large chunk and in some cases a majority of the capital/risk/future obligation. There is no such private partner here.
–They claim this is a public/private partnership. Really!? Thus far we have $62 million in Public money and $2.4 million in private funds. Let’s do the math, that’s 98.5% public and 1.5% private. A partnership? Only folks in government would make such claims!
–Frisco fully supports the Arts. We provide the Frisco Association of the Arts with a majority of their funding each year, we’ve just built a Sci-Tech and Black Box Theater ($2M project), we just loaned $39M to refurbish the Stars Center (which has shows, concerts, and other various entertainment etc…) and we have $4M authorized for a community theater to be built in Frisco. You can support the arts and be opposed to this specific project.
–Stop making absurd claims like this project will pay for itself in 4 years!! (There is a slide on a presentation on the Arts of Collin County website that make this claim). It most certainly will not. If it would it wouldn’t require over $60M in taxpayer money and it wouldn’t need AT LEAST an additional $1.5 million dollars annually forever! We’re not stupid, although some make think us so.
–If only the park and the Performance Hall are funded why is there a graphic on a slide on the ACC website that shows a host of other buildings as well? I’m guessing (and by the way they are not) they’re not funded and will require even more taxpayer money in the future to fund them. No thanks!
Folks, anyhow, lots to talk about. I’ll be preparing for my comments for Tuesday night and I also have a couple of surprises that I’m sure will make for very interesting viewing.
PLEASE EMAIL COUNCIL AND MAYOR AS SOON AS YOU CAN WITH A FEW LINES OR A LONG LETTER. Here are their email addresses again:
jcheney@friscotexas.gov
sjohnson@friscotexas.gov
dprince@friscotexas.gov
bcrowder@friscotexas.gov
ballen@friscotexas.gov
mmaso@friscotexas.gov
pfallon@friscotexas.gov
Thanks so much for your help on this and for standing up for taxpayers’ rights. Tell the council & mayor that the citizens need to vote on this May 8th, 2010. PUT IT ON THE BALLOT!!!!!!
Please feel free to call or email anytime.
Cheers,
Patrick Fallon
(214) 507-4861
The Blessed Life 