(Seguin) — Stimlus funds may soon be used to help to jump start a number of capital improvements projects in the city of Seguin. The city last year received $7.4 million as part of the American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA). The city has only spent a fraction of the total allotment, but staff has identified a number of potential projects, and the Seguin City Council recently reached a consensus to move forward with everything included on the staff generated list.
City Manager Steve Parker says ARPA funds can be used in a variety of ways, which is why they have spent months looking at possible projects that could now be funded.
The neighborhood park, next to the old Juan Seguin campus, would start to take shape with the installation of a basketball court.
“These are things that we would have typically purchased anyway. There’s not a lot of things on this list, but it will eventually free up money that we would have spent in the general fund. So it’s a really good source. It’s a source of funds that are used to help cities get back on their feet, because of lost revenue,” said Parker.
The city used about $1 million from the fund to cover some expenses in 2021. Parker says that leaves $6.4 million for the city to spend on eligible projects. Parker says they focused on capital improvement projects that were previously identified. The list includes technology upgrades for a number of departments, funds to help replace the golf cart warehouse in Max Starcke Park, plus for a number of building maintenance projects. It’s a long list of things that can now be funded using thiis federal money.
“So what we did, we went through our CIP (capital improvement projects) plan of things we probably would have bought anyway over the next three to five years, and said what can we move up, or what can we spend over that time period that would actually free up money in the general fund and really move us forward. We have a list of initial recommendations for you that totals about $2.8 million,” said Parker.
That figure represents less than half of what is available, but Parker says they wanted to approach the council first and see how it wanted to proceed with the rest of the funds. Staff was recommending that the rest of the money be primarily earmarked to help fund several projects identified in the city’s parks master plan. The parks plan created a long range strategy on how to improve the city’s overall parks system. It includes expansion of existing park spaces, plus the addition of several new parks and trails. Parker says they can’t fund it all the with remaining ARPA funds, but they can start moving forward on some park projects that otherwise could not be immediately funded.
The long list of park projects includes creation of new amenities in Bauer Park on East College Street. The park, once housed the Seguin Public Library, but it reverted back to park space once the library moved to its current location on West Nolte Street. Parks Director Jack Jones says they want to bring several new feaures to the neighborhood park.
“Currently it’s used quite a bit by elderly folks that live around there. They kind of walk that (trail). It’s about two-tenths of a mile, but you can have a big playground in the middle (and) a pavilion. There’s not a community park, with active equipment, that’s on the east side of Austin Street. There’s nothing over there that’s a city related park. So this is kind of (needed). There are a lot of people that live off of College (Street) and that area. A lot of people live there, and so this park will almost be created like it’s a community park — not just a pocket park. It’s something that everybody on the east side of Austin Street can use it,” said Jones.
A long list of projects is included on the propsoed list of ARPA projects.
The council agreed to use a portion of the funds to complete the pickleball project at the old Saegert campus. The city purchased the tennis courts and buildings located near the courts from the Seguin ISD. The ARPA funds will allow the buildings to be removed, the tennis courts resurfaced, along with the addition of restrooms and picnic seating in that area.
The council also agreed to allow a sizable sum to be spent to completely upgrade the city’s Softball 4-Plex on Nelda Street. Jones says the facility has been neglected for a long time, and this will help provide more programming at the site, and also attract more users to the facility.
“When it rains now, there are four lakes in there. Over time, the clay and the dirt — it all needs to be reworked, with fine conditioner so that it drains better. Now when it rains, it’s literally five days before all the water goes off the infields. You can’t play. I think if you do it right, it can rain on one day and you can play the next day, or you can play the same day. We priced it out. It’s almost $200,000 per field to do the outfield and the infield. There have been complaints of stickers in the outfield. Just like with the golf course, there’s all kinds of grasses out there. It just makes sense for the kids that use it today. Seguin Youth Soccer uses it for practice. It makes sense to upgrade the facilities for our local youth and our adult solftball league. Going back to what Mr. Parker said about tournaments, we can have (more tournaments). We get complaints about the restrooms, which are not very good and the concessions (are not very good). It’s just over time, things haven’t been improved. We have a lot of deferred maintenance. So with this money, we could make it top notch,” said Jones.
In addition to addressing existing park facilities, the plan also calls for a neighborhood park to be created near the old Juan Seguin campus, which is now home to Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church. Jones says the parks master plan called for the creation of the Juan Seguin Neighborhood Park in that area. He says they will use some of the ARPA funds to build the first amenity at the site. He says a large basketball court will be installed there for the community to enjoy. Councilman Chris Rangel represents that area, and says he was excited about the plan. Jones explained that there’s an existing slab in that area, and they will be able to put the new court in near that site.
“There’s almost an existing (slab), and this almost needs to be in that same spot,” said Jones.
Councilman Rangel asked if that would open things up for the rest of the proposed park. Jones says that’s exactly the idea.
“To the north, it will be wide open and as you go to the south down closer to the church where the (Walnut Springs) trail comes around…we can do another Park West like basketball court, like we are doing in Manuel Castilla Park right now,” said Jones.
Park improvements on ARPA list.
Parker says some grant funding is being sought for some of the projects that made thel list. He says if those grants are funded, then it will allow the city to get more of the capital improvement projects completed using a mixture of funding sources. The council, last Tuesday, asked lots of questions about the funding and the overall plan, but in the end it reached a consensus that it wanted staff to start moving forward with this plan of work. Parker says now that they have been given the green light to get started, they will start making plans to get these projects done.
“It really sounds like everybody is okay with everything on the list. It sounds like we can just work as a staff, if you trust us to make sure that we are phasing this in, we are checking on these grants, and as things open up — then we can flip those (other) things in. But if we need to delay something and we are short $500,000. We can wait on the restrooms at the pickleball courts (or) let’s wait on the shade structure or something like that somehwere else. We know we can go back and add those in, but the small items — I think we can pull the trigger and get everything going,” said Parker.
A full list of the proposed projects can be found on our website, seguintoday.com.