Amarillo approves issuing certificates of obligation up to $7M for athletic field lighting

With a lengthy debate that took up most of Tuesday’s meeting, the Amarillo City Council voted to approve issuing an amount not to exceed $7 million in certificates of obligation (CO) for improving and adding lighting to the city’s many athletic and recreation fields. The council voted 4-1 to issue the certificates.

Councilmember Cole Stanley was the lone dissenting vote, with the other four council members all voting to approve the measure. Previously, Stanley had also opposed funding the city’s project to renovate the Amarillo Hardware Building to become the new Amarillo City Hall through American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds.

Under this proposal, Athletic Field Lighting would be improved at Amarillo city parks with a priority on those facilities with softball and soccer fields; the John Stiff softball and soccer complexes would be among the eight facilities to be upgraded.

At the previous City Council meeting, the parks and recreation department had proposed it would require $8.2 million to improve all needed facilities. The current measure for proposed funding would exclude some facilities, such as the city’s tennis complexes, which would be addressed through other funding measures or grants.

El Alamo Park, Thompson Park, River Road and Martin Road may qualify for ARP funds. These parks are considered low to moderate-income areas, making up the difference in needed funding from the overall lighting project for athletic fields. Even with the athletic field lighting improvement, many other lighting improvements are necessary at all parks throughout the city that will still need to be addressed in additional funding.

More: Amarillo Parks and Recreation searching for community input on department's way forward

More: Amarillo residents make their voices heard during parks-centered forum

Michael Kashuba, the Amarillo director of parks and recreation, spoke about the rising cost of materials that would only rise with more delay about moving forward with the much-needed athletic field lighting.

Amarillo City Manager Jared Miller talked about how moving forward with the city’s plan for funding would give the capability to start evaluating bids for the lighting project with an ability to limit rising future costs. He also spoke about the cost savings possible with the usage of LED lights compared with older lighting models.

“We can design a timeline to get this locked in as soon as possible so that we do not experience any more inflation than is absolutely necessary within the next few months,” Miller said.

Stanley pushed back at issuing a certificate of obligation for funding the project and spoke of possibly using the previous year’s budget windfall of approximately $8 million from sales tax toward park lighting.

Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson said the sales tax money was already allocated to other capital projects with higher priorities than parks and recreation. She stressed that specific capital projects would have to be removed in favor of the parks project.

Nelson spoke of the problem with delaying funding through other means and thought that a delay would also impact safety. She also talked about the advantage of doing the measure now with much lower interest rates involved. Nelson felt that the impact would be at its most minimal cost to the taxpayer by issuing a CO at this time.

“Seeing the pictures of those lighting poles blowing over with our high winds, I have real safety concerns,” Nelson said.

“I realize that this measure does not have a legitimate tax impact. The big issue for me is that this circumvents the taxpayer in the way of not allowing them to weigh in on this. I feel like this would be supported,” Stanley said.

Stanley said he would support a vote by the taxpayers to get funding but not an issuance of a CO.

Nelson chimed in that the council is elected to make these types of decisions.

“Constituents elect us to make decisions like this,” Nelson said in response to Stanley during the meeting. “This is a small impact on the tax rate. It is a highly impactful quality of life decision and has been delayed. We didn’t have lights last summer. It will take us a year to put these in, and meanwhile, we have the safety issue of old poles being blown down on our high wind days. It’s something that has an urgency to it from a time point of view. That’s what citizens elect us to do.”

Previously, the council had spoken on the need for additional lighting and its benefits to the city.

One of the major priorities in improving lighting at these athletic fields is to create more revenue streams from being able to use these facilities to host tournaments and create a greater quality of life improvements for residents of the area.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo approves funding for athletic field lighting