COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Okay. We’ll go on to the next. We have number 5, land transfer Hidalgo County, Scott.
MR. BORUFF: Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, for the record, my name is Scott Boruff, deputy executive director of operations. Here today to brief you on this and ask for you to place this item on the agenda for tomorrow, relative to a land transfer in Hidalgo County relative to the World Birding Center.
As you may or may not know, the 76th Legislature directed us to support the development of the World Birding Center in the Valley. The state was directed to put $2 million into three sites, one of which we’re going to talk about today at Weslaco, Texas, called the Estero Llano Grande site.
This site has — I’m going to put the picture up here. I don’t know if you can see it real good. If you prefer, I will pass this around, or hold it up. I don’t know what will work best to give you an idea.
This is a site that originally was a portion of a wildlife management area called the Adams Unit of the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area. Several years ago, we swapped that with some state park land called Arroyo Colorado in order to develop this state park, which is going to be part of the World Birding Center.
We have expended the $2 million we were directed to expend by the legislature. I’m going to show you some pictures here in a moment of some of the headquarters that have been developed there. The requirement for the local entities was to match whatever money that the state put in, up to $2 million. The city of Weslaco decided to purchase a piece of property adjacent to the land.
Now, for purposes of this, this is the World Birding Center site that we have developed. This little red representation up here in the corner is where we built the headquarters. There are wetlands that have developed with trails that run throughout, which allow people then to walk out through the wetlands to see the birds and so forth out here.
The city of Weslaco, several years ago, seven years ago, I believe, purchased what’s called the Lakeview Trailer Park — it’s right here — with the intent of vacating the trailer park and transferring it to Parks and Wildlife as their match for the World Birding Center project. The city has — and here are some pictures of the Lakeview Trailer Park. This is really a beautiful habitat and you can’t really see that in the pictures, but this is one of the few areas in the Valley where some of the original natural habitat is still intact.
When the city came to us, like I say, seven years ago, and offered this property up as a match, our response to them was we would be glad to take the property as a match, but we were not willing to be in the trailer home business. If they were willing to deal with getting that property vacated and donated to us, we’d be glad to take it, but we did not want to be engaged in the negotiations with the residents regarding how they were going to move out and those kind of things.
The reality is, over the last six years, this has been quite a contentious issue down in the Valley, particularly in Weslaco, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you gentlemen haven’t heard some of this, and wouldn’t be surprised if you hear some more of it tomorrow at the public hearing, assuming that you put this on the agenda.
The city has recently taken some pretty active steps to try to get the residents out of the trailer park. The residents have resisted. There have been a couple of lawsuits. My understanding is they both have been dismissed, but there are continuing efforts on some of the residents’ parts to prevent this from happening.
On the other hand, we have kind of tried to keep arm’s length from this process. Despite attempts to draw us into the process, we have said this is a local issue. If the city wants to do this, that’s their business. They continue to say they want to use this as their match.
The process we’ve gone through is to work with them to identify portions of this park which are currently vacant. There are approximately 80 or 90 trailer park sites in the trailer park, about 60 percent of which are vacant. The proposal that will come before you tomorrow, assuming you put it on the agenda, would be to authorize the executive director — assuming we get to the point where we’re comfortable with this — to accept those lots that are vacant at this point.
The city’s intent is to ultimately give us all the land, but they have about 60 percent of this property vacant. They have been having some trouble managing it. Their intent is to move it to us as soon as possible.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: So we would get 60 percent of it roughly?
MR. BORUFF: Right now.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: And manage it and everything?
MR. BORUFF: We do have management on site. We do have a park manager who’s here every day.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: Oh, we do already?
MR. BORUFF: We do manage what we currently own.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: Right.
MR. BORUFF: I will tell you that the city has already transferred to us the front five acres of this trailer park, which is not inhabited. It has good habitat on it. About a year ago, they transferred this five acres to us. There’s about 18 acres in the vacant lots in the park they would prefer to transfer to us now.
They also wanted, at one point, to transfer some of the common areas. There’s a swimming pool there, and there’s a meeting room, and those kind of things. Our response is we would like to not have those until it’s completely clear. We don’t want to manage the trailer park issues.
We do think ultimately, assuming the city can work out its differences with the residents and get this land cleared, that this would be a good addition.
COMMISSIONER BROWN: Are these contiguous acres that are currently not being used for trailer park? Or are they just spotted and scattered around?
MR. BORUFF: They’re scatted to some extent. What we did is try to go in and in a reasonable fashion pick out portions of the park that had multiple trailer park sites we could survey together and transfer at one time. So they’re not all contiguous.
COMMISSIONER FRIEDKIN: What’s involved in terms of habitat development of that site, the amount that we would get? What do we need to do?
MR. BORUFF: We probably would not do very much over here. The habitat that is there is pretty impressive. We spent most of our money and effort out here. This, before, was a big sunflower field. And so we’ve gone out there and contoured it and added water control features to be able to lower and raise the water level for different kinds of bird species. Most of our energy in terms of habitat restoration and those kinds of things has and would continue to occur out here.
Our idea here is if we could just get this — our message to the city was this is good habitat. If it were vacant, we would be glad to accept it.
MR. COOK: It’s a long term project. We wouldn’t do anything with that habitat in there until it’s completely cleaned up. We’re not going to push on these folks. Some of these folks have been there a while. There’s a real high turnover in occupants at the park. Had the city, five or six years ago, when we agreed to this thing, had they not allowed new visitors to come in, we wouldn’t be having this question today.
COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: This could have been done through attrition —
MR. COOK: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: — if they had capped it at a certain day.
MR. COOK: Which is what we suggested, what we recommended.
MR. BORUFF: Actually, the city agreed to that six years ago. Unfortunately, there had been a lot of turnover in city management in Weslaco in my six years at the agency. We’re on our third mayor and fourth city manager.
MR. COOK: But now they have asked us to accept these groups of sites and I think that’s probably a positive step. We’re not going to go in and disturb them, do anything. We won’t accept them unless they’re completely cleaned off, nothing there.
COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Unoccupied is the term.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: Unoccupied.
MR. BORUFF: We’re not accepting anything that’s —
COMMISSIONER HOLT: Why do you want to do it piecemeal, because you can argue, theoretically, that you can wait until Weslaco finally gets rid of everybody and gets rid of 100 percent?
MR. BORUFF: We’d like to accomplish it this century.
COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: I think it locks the deal in.
MR. COOK: I think it supports the city’s commitment.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: To doing this?
MR. COOK: Yes. It precludes future occupation.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: Right.
COMMISSIONER BIVINS: Will this subject our staff that’s running the facility to any confrontational issues or anything of that nature?
MR. COOK: Not really. We’ve, you know, the possibility exists. For example, there’s some folks there that we would like to incorporate into our volunteer program. They’re great birders, you know. We just need to get in a position where we can do that. It has been, like Scott says, the turnover there in the community, in leadership in the community and in the park itself, has made it very difficult.
MR. BORUFF: This is something we’ve literally been working on full time for five or six years. So we’re kind of pleased to get to this point. I think it will signal to everybody that this is a project that’s a serious project.
COMMISSIONER HOLT: It is going to happen.
MR. COOK: We have refused consistently to be any part of pushing anybody out, you know. Just give it some time. It will work out. We’ve consistently said that for six years.
MR. BORUFF: One correction. This is not on the agenda for tomorrow. We are seeking permission for us to go out to public hearings so that we could put this on the next agenda.
MR. COOK: Yes, we need to go out to public meetings.
COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Any further questions or discussion?
(No response.)
COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: If there are no further questions or discussion, I’ll ask staff to obtain appraisals, explore options, and begin the public notice and input process.