FOR council says goodbye to city hall

The Fair Oaks Ranch conducted its final city council meeting ever in its city hall last week.

The big and long-awaited changeover comes as the reconfiguration to expand city staff offices in the once council chambers is underway. The council unanimously approved a budget amendment for the construction costs with Waterman Construction for $177,643, bringing the conversion cost to a total of $952,945 to convert the council chambers to office spaces.

“This is the last council meeting that will be conducted in the council chambers,” FOR Mayor Greg Maxton said. “Right now, the plan is our next council meeting is scheduled to take place in the Police Training Room.”

FOR City Manager Tobin Maples said the council migration is coming on the heels of the city’s implementation of live broadcasting, allowing residents to view the city council meetings from home or outside a city building. 

“You may have cables hanging out of the ceiling and everything else, but we’ll get it done,” Maples added after Maxton’s announcement, as the wiring for the live broadcasting capability is being installed in the FOR Police Department training room.

“It’s my understanding the install some of the cable pulling is going to start next week for the Police Training room to start live streaming,” Maples said. “Can’t tell you when it’s going to be completed, but we’re at least starting and we’re mobilizing. Joanna (Merrill) and the IT Department have been extremely busy.”

The city council approved the $177,643 increase to the city hall reconfiguration earlier this month, which will include upgrades to the exterior stairs to a non-combustible material, the instillation of additional security cameras and access controls and upgrades to technology cabling in the building.

The city hall conversion will include about 10 new office spaces, with two being enclosed private offices and the rest being open-space cubicles. While city staff has indicated they are having a hard time filling vacant positions, the need for additional office space is apparent from the use of portables outside the city building. Also, two city staff positions were filled officially at the meeting last week, indicating the staffing woes are turning around.

The city hall conversion was one phase of a two-phase project, where the current city hall was to be converted to additional office space for city staff and new civic center was to be constructed. City council meetings were to be held in the new building.

Construction of the new civic center and renovation of the current city hall in Fair Oaks Ranch officially was halted last summer because initial construction bids came back at twice the $1.2 million city officials earlier approved. But several city council members instructed city staff to look at the cost of bifurcating the two projects to prioritize the city hall renovation for staff.

Bifurcating the projects is exactly what happened, leaving the civic center unfunded and seemingly forgotten by city staff. While Place 4 Councilmember Laura Koerner sought an update on the civic center from city staff at last week’s meeting, little was offered in way of an update. Maples told council that staff would continue to work on the project and come back to council with updated information.

Previously, Maples said the COVID-19 pandemic caused the cost of materials and labor to increase, meaning the city couldn’t get the bottom line for the proposed civic center close to the allocated $1.2 million, even with a rather simple design. He said to lower the construction cost to the desire amount would lead to a much less desirable facility.

The new civic center was proposed to be 3,000 to 4,000 square feet and would house the city council chambers primarily – with a kitchen facility to “enhance catering needs for events and meetings” – and would be usable as a civic center for private use by citizens. The outline of the project states the city would like the rock façade of the older, existing building that would be torn down to make way for the civic center be salvaged for reuse on the new build to “ensure the theme of the current municipal campus is maintained.”