Thursday, April 25, 2024
TOLAR _ With Tolar growing at a rapid pace, city officials are looking to toughen development standards and to hold developers responsible if they fail to meet those standards.
The City Council recently hired Fort Worth-based Shield Engineering Group to help achieve those goals.
“Basically, any time a new project comes up, they’ll be the ones to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up and to help us to know what we don’t know, basically, because it’s all new to us,” Mayor Matt Hutsell told the Hood County News. “We’re learning as we go.”
Hutsell said that the town’s growth has been making it challenging for City Administrator Michelle Burdette to keep up with permits and various other things associated with expansion. As an example of the town’s growth, he said that last year there were 430 water meters but over the past four or five months, 500 new homes “in various stages of development” have gone on the books.
“I mean, it’s a phenomenal growth,” he said. “We’re basically doubling the amount of water meters that we have. And, so, for each one of those meters, that represents about three people, at least.”
Tolar city officials are about to start construction on a new sewer plant that will double the capacity of its current plant and will be easily expandable. As for potable water, the city is expanding on that, too, with an additional well and a 40,000-gallon ground storage tank.
MINDING THE STORE
At its regular meeting last week, the Tolar City Council discussed two developments that are in progress by the same developer. Multiple issues have been found at both, but one, in particular, has raised concerns.
Burdette was part of that discussion as were SEG representatives Craig Barnes, the company’s president and chief executive officer, and engineer Max Aransen.
Council members Brian Gall and Kevin Fron expressed a desire for accountability and a willingness to shut down construction.
No action was taken against either development that night, but Hutsell told the HCN that the council will work with SEG to monitor the developer’s progress toward conformity.
“If he’s not receptive to what we’re saying, then absolutely, I’m for shutting that project down until it comes into compliance,” he said.
Burdette stated that a possible course of action for the city in such situations might be to halt work on homes under construction in a development and to refuse to issue additional building permits to builders, which might cause “a chain reaction” resulting in a developer’s compliance.
While speaking of developers in general, Burdette said that there has been “a good-ol’-boy thing going on in lieu of the professional standards that we want the city to have.”
She indicated that even though city staff “work very hard” to put everything in writing, opinions often differ about the city’s expectations and developers’ interpretations of those expectations. There has been a good deal of “misremembering” or “miscommunication,” she said, but “not as much of that happens” now that SEG is involved.
Burdette praised the SEG representatives and noted how helpful they have been.
“They’ve probably given us way more than they’ve ever charged,” she stated. “They’re just invaluable to us.”
Hutsell later told the HCN that, as a longtime council member and new mayor, he does not find it difficult to ride herd on developers despite living in a small, albeit rapidly growing, town where most people know each other.
“For me, it’s not (difficult) because as the mayor, I feel like I’ve been charged with that responsibility to keep the developments positive or make sure they put out a quality product to keep the town nice and to keep home values up and everything that goes along with that. It’s my duty to do that. Sometimes I (personally) know some developers and some people that are house builders, and we hold them to the same standards as everyone.”
