The Rockdale City Council will hold a workshop session at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at City Hall to discuss a petition the city recently received asking for an election May 2 to decide where to allocate sales tax funds currently being collected by the Rockdale Municipal Development District (MDD).
There’s one other agenda item Thursday. The council will discuss “options” for the city’s water treatment plant, alternative water supply and Rockdale’s water and wastewater system.
Workshops are discussion only and there are no action items on Thursday’s agenda.
The council’s regular monthly session, at which action can be take on agenda items, is at 5:30 Monday, also at City Hall.
PETITION—On Jan. 13, Richard Burns, former member of the Rockdale Hospital District Board, presented the city a 206-signature petition. He also appeared at the council session that afternoon.
The petition asks the city to let Rock-dale residents decide whether the half-cent sales tax collected by the MDD since 2009 should be returned to the hospital district, which would use the funds as its share of operating the HealthPoint/CHI-St. Joseph’s Clinic, which opened last November on the campus of the former Richards Memorial Hospital.
The MDD was created in a 2009 vote and, since that year, has collected the sales tax which formerly went to the hospital district.
HEALTH CARE— When the former Little River Health Care closed Rock-dale’s hospital and local clinics in December, 2018—leaving Rockdale without health care providers—the hospital district began asking large providers if they would be interested in establishing a presence in Rock-dale.
One answered positively, CHI-St. Joseph’s headquartered in Bryan.
Through its associated rural health partner, Health-Point, St. Joseph’s agreed to open a clinic in a suite on the former hospital’s campus.
But the estimated cost to keep such a facility running was put at $400,000 annually. St. Joseph’s agreed to pick up half that tab.
That left the hospital district with the task of finding the other $200,000. To that end the district sought, unsuccessfully, to have either the city or MDD to transfer its annual sale tax collections to support the new clinic.
PROPERTY TAX—After those moves failed, the hospital district reverted to its only other course of income, a property tax.
The district has the authority to collect up to a 50-cent property tax and once levied a 48-cent tax to keep the hospital financially afloat in one of its frequent crises.
Directors initially said a 16.9 cent property tax would be required. They later announced the district would spend its reserve funds in order to enact a lower tax rate but those funds would last only two years.
A 6.5-cent rate was imposed in 2019 and appears on Rockdale residents’ tax bills for that tax year.
In October, the matter of calling a vote on the sales tax allocation was a council agenda item. Two persons spoke on the matter at that council session, both in favor of letting the MDD keep the tax, citing the need for economic development.
In his January plea to the council Burns said petition signers were not requesting the MDD disband. “We are asking to let the citizens decide where these funds should be placed.”
After that meeting, City Manager Chris Whittaker said the council could only vote on the petitioners’ request if the matter were placed on a council agenda, an action that can only be performed if requested by a council member.
WATER QUESTIONS—Other agenda item could see council members re-visit terms and conditions of their Dec. 9 decision to purchase water from Blue Water Inc. for the multi-million-dollar overhaul of the water system.
Rockdale water customers have already seen their bills increase dramatically in 2019 and another round of increases appears imminent this year.
The council mulled for months last year on whether to continue using city-owned wells—and construct a new water plant to treat iron and manganese believed to be the cause of the city’s decades-old “red water” woes—or purchase “drinking quality” water from deeper wells.
While that would relieve the city, and is rate payers, from the expense of constructing a new water plant, it would also obligate them to fund a pipeline to Blue Water’s well head in Burleson County
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