County’s plan to issue bonds for courthouse repairs and other projects without a vote could be thwarted
PRESIDIO COUNTY — Some Presidians are speaking out against the county’s plan to go out for a $5.5 million bond, organizing a petition to put the measure to a vote among county residents. At the center of the issue is the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa –– which has been widely considered to be in need of emergency repairs for years –– but the bond would also include capital investments in the form of county annex renovations and new equipment for the road and bridge department, which hemorrhages money trying to work with outdated and broken equipment.
The county began the latest push to renovate the courthouse in 2022, chasing funding from nonprofits and other entities to try to pay up front. After years of frustrating and less-than-fruitful grant cycles, the county decided to take a completely different financial approach — issuing millions of dollars in certificates of obligation (CO) bonds that don’t require voter approval under state law.
Conversations about taking on debt began at a Commissioners Court meeting last August after county officials reached a point of total burnout. Year after year, they passed bare-bones budgets while pressure to make major repairs and invest in new equipment mounted. Simultaneously, the county’s financial leadership had taken a conservative, zero-debt approach in the name of getting the government’s finances back on track after the county repeatedly failed to complete audits on time.
At the time, County Judge Joe Portillo seemed supportive of adding a few pennies to the tax rate, and the commissioners went to work setting their wish lists for overdue repairs. “It’s something that previous commissioners courts have never really done, and I admire them for it,” Portillo told The Sentinel last summer of the prospect of taking on debt. “But what they’ve done is they’ve denied themselves a lot of the things that they need.”
Commissioners (with the exception of a “no” vote from Portillo) voted on June 11 to give notice to the public of its intent to issue $5.5 million in COs, and the county auditor published the notice in The Big Bend Sentinel on June 12 and 19.
Presidio residents said, “Not so fast,” and now hope to put a kibosh on the plan, circulating a Facebook post with information about the bond and a petition. At a special Presidio County City Council meeting Monday, a couple dozen residents joined city officials in criticizing the bonds –– which they feel are unfairly slanted to benefit Marfa.
Residents also brought a petition to stop the COs and encouraged everyone at the meeting to sign it, and Portillo said he was hearing plenty of objections from residents. “I’m hoping that we can just have an honest discussion about how you guys feel about this,” Portillo said. “I know what I’ve heard in the last two weeks has been, ‘Maybe [the courthouse] should just be a museum. Maybe we shouldn’t have that building anymore.’ I’ve heard, ‘Maybe we should change the designation of the county seat. Maybe it’s time for us to be looking at something else. Maybe we should buy another building. Do we really need an opulent building if we can’t afford it?’”
State law says that if 5% of a county’s registered voters sign a petition against the issuance of COs, the county will be forced to have an election on the bond. According to the Presidio County Tax Assessor’s Office, the county has 4,286 registered voters, which means that the petition will need 215 signatures. Presidio City Councilmember Fernando Juarez, who has helped spearhead the opposition to the bonds, said Tuesday that he and fellow activists had already gathered more than the required signatures.
County commissioners attended the city council virtually, and, at the advice of County Attorney Blair Park, avoided any discussion of the issue — particularly with other commissioners — to stay within bounds of the state’s Open Meetings Act. That left Park in the role of explaining the reasoning for the COs and the projects that they would fund.
Park said the numbers are not certain — because an engineering firm is still working on final estimates — but initial estimates include a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system for the courthouse at $3 million, a new courthouse elevator at $220,000, renovation of the county annex at $1 million, with the rest of the funds allocated to new Road and Bridge Department equipment and other infrastructure improvements. Park lauded Commissioner Franky Ortiz for working to get the annex on the project list.
Park and other county employees have noted that without a functional elevator, the county could be sued for not meeting the Americans with Disabilities Act, or for an injured visitor to the courthouse or a trial. County employees have objected to working in offices where the temperatures sometimes rise into the 90s in the summer and drop to the 40s in the winter.
Jurors in the summer 2023 trial of Jim White in the lawsuit against him by his siblings over Brite Ranch trusts recalled that it was a sweltering and possibly dangerous environment for the two-week trial. A retrial of the lawsuit is set for August 18 in the courthouse, unless Jim’s son succeeds with a motion — to be heard today — to change the venue.
Park said counties often use COs for large capital projects to pay them over, typically, 15-20 years, depending on the terms of the loan.
Several residents brought up a possible tax increase to pay for the bonds, but until the county budget process moves forward and terms of the COs are known, it’s uncertain if an increase would be needed. But Park indicated that with the current majority of commissioners supporting the projects, if the petition succeeds and stops the COs, the county would still move ahead and pay for the projects with its reserves — which stand at about $6 million.
“We don’t have to raise taxes because we dip into reserves,” Park said. “But if we spend all of our reserves and we’re going into the red, then we have to raise taxes in order for the county to stay afloat. That’s why we don’t want to spend through our reserves, which is why we would like to be able to take a loan from a bank to facilitate all of these projects.”
On Wednesday morning, protests against the COs continued at a special meeting of the Presidio County Commissioners Court, which had an agenda item to contract with a financial consultant who would take bids on bank loans.
A motion to approve that item failed, with Portillo, and commissioners Ortiz and Margarito Hernandez — joining forces as Presidio residents — voting “no” and commissioners David Beebe and Deirdre Hisler voting “aye.” While the denial of that item doesn’t technically kill the county’s call for COs, it takes out an important part of the process.
Presidio residents at the meeting called for commissioners to reconsider the entirety of the proposals and start the process of looking at capital projects again.
Commissioner David Beebe told The Big Bend Sentinel that courthouse repairs and renovations have been discussed for more than two years in court. Everything seemed in sync among commissioners for how to pay for the project until Judge Portillo threw a wrench in the process because he was upset about his peers not being supportive enough of a combined law enforcement center to be constructed in Presidio and a recent setback in his attempt for TxDOT to turn over the International Bridge to the county. “We’re supposed to move forward as a commissioners court and get something done — until one person decided that he wants his name on the law enforcement center and after his bridge project has been stymied,” Beebe said of the judge.
County Commissioner Deirdre Hisler said in a phone interview that she also believes the judge’s mindset has changed from being a supporter –– and even originator –– of the projects and COs to a naysayer. “The fact that David Beebe and [County Auditor] Alicia [Sanchez] had been working on these certificates of obligation for over a year now, Joe had every right to attend those meetings and to get projects in, but he was so focused on the bridge that he had no input into it.”
Presidio City Councilmember Juarez said in a phone interview that his city’s residents felt the COs were approved in an underhanded way and noted that the legally-required notice from the county was only published in The Big Bend Sentinel and not The Presidio International. (The law only requires publishing in one paper.) “It would’ve helped to have better representation from our commissioners — maybe the commissioners reaching out to the locals here and saying, ‘Hey, this is coming up.’”
“I think there’s a lot of frustration going around with the way money is divided up between North County and South County,” Juarez said. “And, this is just one of those examples where they’ll want to give South County $1 million and the other four and half million up there. … And my question to Blair [Park] yesterday was, ‘Have you thought of any other options?’ I mean, we’re not trying to have Marfa employees without an air conditioner. We’re just saying that the courthouse is inadequate. It’s old, it’s small.”
Commissioner Ortiz, who lives in and represents portions of Presidio, said he voted to issue the COs because of the dire need to protect visitors and employees. “The commissioners that were there years back … they wouldn’t fix anything,” he said. “They would just put on a little bandaid, and the little bandaid gets soggy, so they put on another bandaid.”
“I work in construction,” Ortiz said. “That [courthouse] breaker box, it’s so old. In the winter, the ladies that are in there, each of them have [space] heaters on all day. Then the breaker box pops, boom. So the girls go and pop the breaker back on. It’s going to get to a point where that breaker box, it’s going to blow up and it’s going to cause a fire. And that courthouse is just all wood. If someone dies in there because of a fire or someone is stuck inside the elevator and a fire starts … I don’t wanna have that in my conscience if someone dies. And because we all know that that courthouse needs repairs, in the end, we’re going to be paying a lawsuit, plus everybody’s taxes are still gonna go up.”
However, Ortiz, Beebe and Hisler said they understand the frustration of Presidians and say it’s likely that their petition will result in a ballot-box decision — something they all said is part of the public process. Judge Portillo did not respond to a request for comment by deadline, but he said in the Presidio City Council meeting that he didn’t object to the CO process without a vote but wanted to ensure there was equity across the county’s communities for investments.