By: Jeremy Tarr - City Administrator
Grow or die is the motto I am using these days. I believe Plainview has a great opportunity to grow and improve.
With my position, I have the honor of serving on many different boards and committees that have the goal of building a better place for our children. Paving, housing, daycare, school addition, community building, and recreational expansion are the major projects that I hope to see progress on this year.
Lincoln street is the building block that ties all of these ambitious projects together.
The paving project consists of Lincoln Street from Pine to the West gate between the ballfields and Pine Street between Lincoln and Harper. Along with the paving of the streets, is paved parking between the ballfields, paved drainages, and adding parking to the east of the track as well.
The bidding process is in progress and we will open bids on April 24th. The engineer has estimated the cost to be around $1.5 million for the project, hopefully it comes in less than that.
Who’s paying for it? The burden comes down to the city and school. When we first began, the rough estimate before any surveying or engineering began was around $900,000. As the project evolved and the drainage, which is much needed, was worse than the engineer expected, the price grew.
My hope was that Lincoln between the gates was about the same amount as Pine and the rest of Lincoln, so the burden would be about the same for both entities. This, unfortunately isn’t the case. Once the bids come in, both boards will need to discuss the feasibility and how to best share the burden if they decide to proceed.
If the paving is approved, that will allow the city to move forward with selling the lots to the West of Pine Street. We have been in conversations with Community Capital Partners, who would like to build spec homes. Their goal is to use TIF and government grants to build single family homes in Plainview.
Although this is the hope, if anyone has a desire to build in town, please reach out to me and we will find property that best fits your needs.
Daycare, school addition, community building, and recreational expansion are also great projects that we have the ability to move forward on. The daycare and community building were a goal before I started with the city.
Over the years the goal never changed, but the vision and path to success has. That is how most things work at the city, always changing.
Moving forward, the city has a decision to make that will directly affect the path of the school board and community building committee.
The permanent closure of Woodland Ave between the schools.
The footprint of the high school takes up most of the property, without building up, their ability to build out is limited, so this could be an option for the school to consider. Most likely, this will be an agenda item for the May council meeting.
First, the planning and zoning commission will review the plans and recommend a decision to the council. Both of the meetings will have a public hearing time specifically for the agenda item.
Once a decision is made, the school board will have to plan accordingly on the best path for our community.
How is the community building committee involved? If the Council allows the street to be closed, that will allow the school more space to build. The community building committee would like to work jointly with the school board to create some of the needed community space within the school building.
Obviously, the school can’t accommodate all the needs that are planned in our current community building drawings. If the school can design their structure to be feasible for some of the community building needs, that will allow the community building construction budget and operations budget to become more cost effective.
No matter what path the schoolboard will take, the goal is still to build a community building to the West of the ballfields. The board has diligently worked in creating two drawings that will meet the needs of our community for years to come.
I encourage everyone to attend the meetings that will be happening this spring and summer. I know when we talk about growth and expansion, most see dollar signs, and you are right. Our community is like a household, some improvements can be done with time and hard work and other improvements take money.
It comes down to what the community family household wants to see for their kids and grandchildren. All of these opportunities are up to our community to decide, please use your voice to help our public officials make a decision.
Please be respectful of everyone’s opinion and let all voices be heard.