TL;DR [Cliffs Notes]: College Station is fixing to waste $10 million dollars on 4 adult/high school sized baseball fields. They did a little analysis to determine if this is worth doing 5 years ago. The people who did that analysis no longer work for the city, current staff don't know how that work was done. They haven't done anything since then. But looking at the numbers from 2017 the project is going to raise a negligible amount in tax revenue and tournament fees. Capital costs alone will amount to around one thousand per field per day of community use over the next 20 years. Even if you think the city should spend millions on parks. This is a very inefficient way to benefit a handful of local club baseball teams.
This is regarding Phase 1 of the proposed ballfield that some College Station city council folks and city staff are pushing. This showed up on my radar after the council had a special session to vote for the issuance of $78 million in certificates of obligation (like bonds, but taxpayers don't get a vote). $10 million of that is earmarked for this Phase 1 (the first 4 fields) of a proposed baseball park out on Rock Prairie east of Hwy 6.
https://www.cstx.gov/news/what_s_new/notice_of_intention_to_issue_c_os
https://blog.cstx.gov/2022/05/18/live-blog-wednesdays-city-council-special-meeting-may-18/
https://blog.cstx.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2-CO-Issuance-Notice-of-Intent.pdf
Phase 2 (fields 5-8) has been discussed a little more as a potential $18 million part of the bond package that will go to voters in November. With those bonds, the city has not done much beyond high-level descriptions of what the projects would be.
https://www.cstx.gov/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=18564328
They had a 23-person citizens advisory committee. But I have confirmed with city staff that they weren't given any additional information (e.g., more details regarding costs, benefits, etc.) beyond what is available on the website.
https://www.cstx.gov/our_community/2022_bond_election
I received a response to an Open Records Request related to the proposed park. The City Managers' Office has nothing responsive to the following requests for records between January 1, 2018 and June 14, 2022 (when I sent the request). But they did attach this PowerPoint from August 10, 2017 that had already given me.
"Cost and/or benefit analysis presented to the city council related to Phase 1, Phase 2, any other portion, or the entirety of the proposed Texas Independence Ballpark project (or that project known by another name). Benefits analyzed could include economic benefits or community benefits such as recreational use by citizens or any other quality of life benefits."
"Cost and/or benefit analysis not presented to the city council related to Phase 1, Phase 2, any other portion, or the entirety of the proposed Texas Independence Ballpark project (or that project known by another name). Benefits analyzed could include economic benefits or community benefits such as recreational use by citizens or any other quality of life benefits."
I understand that the intention of moving forward with Phase 1 of the proposed ballpark is to generate tax revenue and provide quality of life improvements to the community. From the 5 year old analysis, the most recent done by city staff, it appears the tax revenue this is expected to generate once the new events are running after 3 years is ($6.3 mil from current events + $0.5 mil from new events) * 1.5% sales rate = around $102k per year. Compare this to the O&M costs listed in the 2017 presentation of $269k or the O&M costs listed for the 4 fields from Phase 2 in the 2022 Bond factsheet of $495k. Even if those figures are reliable (city staff indicated that due to staff turnover, nobody has the work that went into them), they seem to indicate that direct revenue from use fees and indirect incremental tax revenues might almost cover O&M costs at best.
Assuming those combined revenues can offset the O&M costs, that would make this a very inefficient way to improve the quality of life for College Station residents. Below is a back of the envelope calculation nobody at the city has bothered to do using simplifying assumptions for inflation, borrowing costs, etc. and only considering the general fund expenditures and revenues (there is also $6.8 mil to be spent on Phase 1 from HOT funds):
($10 mil construction costs + $5 mil resurfacing after 10 years) / (4 fields * 20 years * 5 weekdays of use [weekends would be for visitors' tournaments, not community use] * 40 weeks per year) = $937.50 per day per field from the general fund over the next 20 years.
I got the $10 million from the Certificates of Obligation presentation. The $5 mil resurfacing is guesstimate after seeing that the cost of resurfacing seems to be about half of the initial costs. The 10/20 years are from the PowerPoint where they indicate that it would be resurfaced after 10 years.
I understand that many consider spending millions on parks to be justified if it is shown to generate enough offsetting tax revenue and/or have an adequate return-on-investment with respect to quality of life considerations. I am more of a protection of the natural rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness kind of guy. But I can appreciate that someone might be a good-faith consequentialist. To those folks: College Station staff and Council have not made any attempt to justify this $10 million they are fixing to spend. The last time anyone looked at this in any way was 5 years ago. Analysis from the work they did then appears to show that this is a massive waste of money.
This is one concrete example of the wasteful spending that they do. Remember it when they tell tales about their inability to lower tax rates to offset the massive increases in housing valuation in a few months.
This is regarding Phase 1 of the proposed ballfield that some College Station city council folks and city staff are pushing. This showed up on my radar after the council had a special session to vote for the issuance of $78 million in certificates of obligation (like bonds, but taxpayers don't get a vote). $10 million of that is earmarked for this Phase 1 (the first 4 fields) of a proposed baseball park out on Rock Prairie east of Hwy 6.
https://www.cstx.gov/news/what_s_new/notice_of_intention_to_issue_c_os
https://blog.cstx.gov/2022/05/18/live-blog-wednesdays-city-council-special-meeting-may-18/
https://blog.cstx.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2-CO-Issuance-Notice-of-Intent.pdf
Phase 2 (fields 5-8) has been discussed a little more as a potential $18 million part of the bond package that will go to voters in November. With those bonds, the city has not done much beyond high-level descriptions of what the projects would be.
https://www.cstx.gov/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=18564328
They had a 23-person citizens advisory committee. But I have confirmed with city staff that they weren't given any additional information (e.g., more details regarding costs, benefits, etc.) beyond what is available on the website.
https://www.cstx.gov/our_community/2022_bond_election
I received a response to an Open Records Request related to the proposed park. The City Managers' Office has nothing responsive to the following requests for records between January 1, 2018 and June 14, 2022 (when I sent the request). But they did attach this PowerPoint from August 10, 2017 that had already given me.
"Cost and/or benefit analysis presented to the city council related to Phase 1, Phase 2, any other portion, or the entirety of the proposed Texas Independence Ballpark project (or that project known by another name). Benefits analyzed could include economic benefits or community benefits such as recreational use by citizens or any other quality of life benefits."
"Cost and/or benefit analysis not presented to the city council related to Phase 1, Phase 2, any other portion, or the entirety of the proposed Texas Independence Ballpark project (or that project known by another name). Benefits analyzed could include economic benefits or community benefits such as recreational use by citizens or any other quality of life benefits."
I understand that the intention of moving forward with Phase 1 of the proposed ballpark is to generate tax revenue and provide quality of life improvements to the community. From the 5 year old analysis, the most recent done by city staff, it appears the tax revenue this is expected to generate once the new events are running after 3 years is ($6.3 mil from current events + $0.5 mil from new events) * 1.5% sales rate = around $102k per year. Compare this to the O&M costs listed in the 2017 presentation of $269k or the O&M costs listed for the 4 fields from Phase 2 in the 2022 Bond factsheet of $495k. Even if those figures are reliable (city staff indicated that due to staff turnover, nobody has the work that went into them), they seem to indicate that direct revenue from use fees and indirect incremental tax revenues might almost cover O&M costs at best.
Assuming those combined revenues can offset the O&M costs, that would make this a very inefficient way to improve the quality of life for College Station residents. Below is a back of the envelope calculation nobody at the city has bothered to do using simplifying assumptions for inflation, borrowing costs, etc. and only considering the general fund expenditures and revenues (there is also $6.8 mil to be spent on Phase 1 from HOT funds):
($10 mil construction costs + $5 mil resurfacing after 10 years) / (4 fields * 20 years * 5 weekdays of use [weekends would be for visitors' tournaments, not community use] * 40 weeks per year) = $937.50 per day per field from the general fund over the next 20 years.
I got the $10 million from the Certificates of Obligation presentation. The $5 mil resurfacing is guesstimate after seeing that the cost of resurfacing seems to be about half of the initial costs. The 10/20 years are from the PowerPoint where they indicate that it would be resurfaced after 10 years.
I understand that many consider spending millions on parks to be justified if it is shown to generate enough offsetting tax revenue and/or have an adequate return-on-investment with respect to quality of life considerations. I am more of a protection of the natural rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness kind of guy. But I can appreciate that someone might be a good-faith consequentialist. To those folks: College Station staff and Council have not made any attempt to justify this $10 million they are fixing to spend. The last time anyone looked at this in any way was 5 years ago. Analysis from the work they did then appears to show that this is a massive waste of money.
This is one concrete example of the wasteful spending that they do. Remember it when they tell tales about their inability to lower tax rates to offset the massive increases in housing valuation in a few months.
Brian Alg
Brazos Coalition for Responsible Government
Brazos Coalition for Responsible Government