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Advisory committee stalls in council debate, city approves sports facility construction
By Penny Rathbun
Staff writer
City Council members are still undecided about who to appoint to the Citizen Advisory Committee for the Photographic Traffic Signal Enforcement System and what the committee should do once appointed.
Council members have been considering this problem since they approved the formation of the committee at the Nov. 6 council meeting and they tabled it for a third time at the regular meeting Tuesday.
At the Dec. 4 council meeting, Lange was tasked with researching how other cities appointed their committees and what those committees did. She said she received little response from other cities, but she said the City of Garland is considering disbanding the red light camera program entirely. The committee in Plano is an advisory committee.
Mayor Pro Tem Jim Joyner said that several cities have used their planning and zoning commissions as red light camera advisory committees.
“I think there’s more to do than red light cameras,” said Council Member Jeff Cheney.
Joyner agreed with him, though he sees it as a committee the city is being forced to appoint. “Granted this is another layer of bureaucracy, but this is being foisted on us,” he said.
Mayor Mike Simpson said his fear was that if the advisory committee was given other transportation issues to deal with citizens would think that transportation issues will be palmed off on the committee rather than the council dealing with them.
“To put other stuff on this committee just to keep them busy, that’s going the wrong direction,” council member Tony Felker said. He has been questioning the need for the committee since the state legislature mandated it.
Lange said she drafted proposed guidelines for the committee, but the council still could not come to an agreement on the committee’s duties or who to appoint. The issue was tabled to the first regular council meeting in 2008.
In another matter, Assistant City Manager Ron Patterson presented development and lease agreements to the council for Sports Village USA.
Sports Village USA, LLC plans to build a 140,000-square-foot multi-use indoor sports facility at Frisco Street and County Road 712, also known as All Stars Avenue.
In the agreements the council approved unanimously, the city will issue certificates of obligation for $12.5 million. The city will own the facility, and Sports Village will lease the facility at a rate equal to the debt service on the building.
Sports Village will then run the facility that will include a dozen basketball and volleyball courts, two turf soccer fields with warm-up areas, a center competition court with bleacher seating, two locker rooms, and mezzanine for second-story viewing. Cost overruns on the $12.5 million are to be paid by Sports Village USA, LLC.
Sports Village USA is also working with Athletic Performance Inc. to bring a professional sports training facility to the site.
Council Member David Prince asked if the facility could be used for other purposes such as large meetings or high school graduations. Patterson said the facility would not lend itself to those uses very easily. He also said that the project still needs to go through the zoning and site planning process.
The council also approved a request to amend development standards for a 72.8-acre planned development on the east side of Teel Parkway. Fences may now be made out of any wood, not just cedar.
An amendment of a specific use permit was also approved to allow for the expansion of Legacy Christian Academy for parking and additional land on 28.1 acres on the north side of Academy Drive and 250 feet east of Legacy Drive.
The rezoning of 18 acres on the west side of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad on the north and south sides of Main Street from industrial and original town commercial to planned development-original town commercial was also approved.
Approval of the consent agenda included a resolution allowing an agreement between the City of Frisco and It’s a Grind Coffee House to operate the café inside the Frisco Public Library. Also approved in the consent agenda was a purchase order to John Wright and Associates Inc. for the purchase of 18 Panasonic Toughbook computers with accessories for the police department.
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