Frisco Tea Party petitions for arts vote
By Marthe Stinton, mstinton@acnpapers.com
Published: Sunday, May 16, 2010 11:37 PM CDT

The Arts of Collin County has been slowly inching toward breaking ground, but it looks like there might be another snag in the plans. The Frisco Tea Party submitted a petition Friday asking for a re-vote on the ACC bond project.

The petition was submitted at 4 p.m. Friday to the city of Frisco with more than 20 supporters present and more than 1,300 signatures on the petition. According to Lorie Medina, a Frisco Tea Party leader, the idea for the petition came from within the Frisco Tea Party and was not created by her or any other leader.

"The membership felt really strongly about it," Medina said. "We have almost 1,400 signatures, with only 876 required. We had 25 people that participated in acquiring signatures; this is not just one or two people who had a beef. This was a groundswell of people who got very involved and spent a lot of time on this."

Medina said that since the city was spending the "voters' money on the project, the voters ought to be able to vote on it."

"We feel like the bond project that was originally voted on is not the same bond project," Medina said. "We, quite frankly, have a lot of people that signed the petition who want to vote on it again that do want to have the ACC facility. We just believe that whatever this project is that our city is spending our money on that we should have the opportunity to vote on what it really is, because it has changed since what they originally voted on."

The Arts of Collin County project was to be a four-city project; however, according to executive director and former Frisco Mayor Mike Simpson, that changed in 2003 when McKinney pulled out of the deal. Medina felt the item should have quickly gone back for a re-vote.

"It was going to be McKinney, Plano, Allen and Frisco, and all of the Frisco city leaders were very clear; and we have video tapes and audio recordings of them saying, 'If it's never done as a four-city deal, we will back out of it' - and they never did," Medina said. "They could have brought it up for a revote then - because really, that would have been the appropriate thing to do - but (they) didn't. They just kept proceeding."

Simpson agreed that it was to be a four-city deal but said that there had been several meetings discussing the council's next move.

"This is public information - it started out as a four-city deal," Simpson said. "We had meeting after meeting after meeting and public hearing after public hearing and got comments from people on the Internet and comments from citizens from three different council meetings, and the council decided to move forward. This thing has been in this situation with three cities since 2003, and in 2004 we put together the inter-local agreement. Why wasn't there a petition in 2003 or 2004? It was a multiple-city project, and that's what it is today."

Another issue Medina said the Frisco Tea Party found unsettling was the maintenance and operating costs.

"The operating expenses have gone up three to five times," Medina said. "It was originally supposed to be $96,000 a year; now they are saying anywhere from $350,000 to over $500,000 a year in operating expenses. It's not even the original capital bond investment but the ongoing operating expenditures. And on top of that, the economy we are in... We feel that there are so many reasons - we need to put it before the voters."

According to Simpson, the funding of the project is in better standing now than it has been.

"We are so much further along in 2010 than we were in 2002, and I don't understand what is the concern of the petitioners," Simpson said. "The cost is yet to be determined as to if it will increase taxes. The maintenance and operating costs are going to be on a per-person basis to the cities. It is lower than it has been, because we have far more people to spread that over."

When asked what she hopes will happen if it is on the November ballot, Medina said, "Quite frankly, whatever happens, I am very happy with that. I just feel that we as citizens have the right to vote on the things we are spending our money on."

Frisco Mayor Maher Maso said that, although he had not seen the petition, the city was committed to ensuring that it carries out anything that meets the charter guidelines.

"Obviously, if a valid petition is submitted, which is to be determined because I have not seen it, then we will follow what the charter requires us to follow," Maso said. "We are pretty consistent about that. At this point, I really can't say much more. We have not evaluated it; signatures have not been verified; the wording hasn't been verified that it meets the requirements that are spelled out it in the charter, which is citizen-approved. We will follow our guidelines and go from there."

When Frisco, Allen and Plano signed on to cover some of the total project cost in 2002, they were under the impression that it would be a four-city deal, with McKinney as the fourth city. It became a three-city project when McKinney decided not to participate. When the deal was still in the planning stages, Frisco voters approved the sale of $19 million in bonds to help finance the construction of the arts project.

The ACC recently received bids that dropped the first phase of construction from $86 million to $69.9 million. Within a few days, the city of Allen agreed to guarantee a loan to cover the last 5 percent of the needed funds, if necessary.

Then the Frisco City Council held a special meeting in March to discuss some council members' concerns about constructing the hall during the current economic conditions, meeting ongoing operating costs in a climate of dwindling revenue, and a need of more information in order to make a decision. Frisco requested a tri-city meeting between the ACC and fellow owner cities, but later suggested the ACC first meet with Frisco officials one-on-one to iron out any misinformation or questions Frisco may have.

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