Council delays vote on updating city’s comprehensive plan

By BRITTANY FHOLER 

Cove Leader-Press 

The Copperas Cove City Council again decided to table an update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan Update that would have amended the 2007 Comprehensive Plan during its regular meeting held Tuesday evening. 

The update was presented to the council last month, where they elected to table the final vote to approve the update until Tuesday. The 2019 Comprehensive Plan Update for the City of Copperas Cove, TX contains seven chapters, four appendices and two Future Land Use Plan maps. 

Councilmember Jay Manning asked for a workshop to be held before the council voted on the plan. 

“I know that we’ve delayed this, but I have worked on it, and I still consider that we may not have the right attitude and air about this,” Manning said.  

He added that there were several ideas in the plan that he thought needed to be workshopped. 

“If I was going to concentrate on one, it would be the downtown plans because we have a record of it caused an uproar and damage,” Manning said. “The engineering that followed that caused a lot of problems with how people felt about the downtown presently, came directly from this plan.” 

He referred to part of the plan dealing with the downtown area. 

“Until we remove the excessive traffic in the downtown area and shun it around it, it’s going to cause problems like what we’re seeing in other places,” Manning said. 

With agreement from Councilmember Kirby Lack and a second to his motion from Marc Payne, the council agreed to table the plan and set a workshop date for November 7 at 5 p.m. 

City Manager Ryan Haverlah said he was fine with a workshop but reiterated the point that the last time the city had a current comprehensive plan was in 2007. 

“So we’re 12 years down the road with a vision or plan that was 12 years ago for us today and 10 years from now as our current plan,” Haverlah said. “That is what is guiding or directing our Capital Improvements.”

The city council also voted to authorize the city manager to execute Change Order No. 11 with Quality W Contractors, LLC for the Park Improvements Project Phase 1. 

The city council approved awarding a bid to Quality W Contractors LLC in December 2017 for park improvements to all of the city’s eight parks for $1.09 million. Since construction began, 10 change orders have been approved for a total of $250,525.20 impacting improvements at six parks. Haverlah stated that most of the park improvements have been completed at: City Park, Heritage Park, High Chapparal Park, Highland Park, Kate Street Park and South Park. 

“Ogletree Gap Preserve Park has an interesting situation that we are trying to address,” Haverlah said. 

The current existing parking lot ends at Post Office Road. The new parking lot will be going into the area where there is currently dirt and gravel. The existing parking lot is failing, Haverlah said. Residents have to drive through a failing parking lot to get to what will be the new parking lot. 

The existing parking lot has no base under it and the asphalt is roughly one-inch thick. The change order would add base, add the proper asphalt and make it ADA compliant, Haverlah said. 

Any change order, cumulative of all previous change orders, increasing the original bid by 25 percent or more requires authorization by City Council. This Change Order, No. 11, will increase the total contract by 34 percent. The change order amount of $120,728.00 will increase the total contract to $1,459,485.40. Funding exists in the 2017 and 2019 Certificates of Obligation in Funds 74 and 90 to cover the amount of the change order, according to the agenda packet. 

In other business, the city council approved authorizing the city manager to execute a Developer Participation Agreement with 4JC Partners, LP for the construction of a roadway as part of the Southwest Water Improvement Project and to facilitate the future development of the Valley at Great Hills Subdivision, located south of U.S. 190 near Big Divide Road. 

The project consists of constructing a 300,000-gallon elevated storage tank, a 500,000-gallon ground storage tank and also an associated pump station. The project, under design by Trihydro Corporation, consists of water distribution system improvements, necessary to serve the southwestern portion of the city and the central pressure plane. 

The site originally selected for the location of the elevated storage tank was changed and moved farther onto the developer’s property to a higher location, reducing the required height of the storage tank by approximately 80 feet and reducing the total cost of the component in the project by $150,000 to $175,000. As a result, a longer access roadway will need to be constructed to facilitate the maintenance of the project facilities. The agreement proposes city participation in the construction project to not exceed $130,994 ($65,497 per phase.) The actual cost of the entire roadway is $436,647.13. 

In conjunction with this action item, council also approved another action item authorizing the city manager to execute a contract amendment with Trihydro Corporation, providing for additional design services for the Southwest Water Improvement, Phase II and III Project. These services complete the final design of the project for an additional cost of $41,000.