KILLEEN, Texas — To plan or not to plan is the current question for city leaders in Killeen.
“Why would we continue to put $1 million into this building when it’s inadequate to start with,” said Killeen City Manager, Kent Cagle.
Next week, Killeen city leaders will vote whether to spend more than $108,000 to develop plans for a new city hall.
“We’ve identified already that there is a need for this,” said Killeen councilwoman, Jessica Gonzalez.
“The question is — 'How do we go about it, and is the time now?' 'How much is it going to cost?', 'Where are we going to put it?'."
The current City Hall building is almost 100 years old and costs thousands to upkeep every year.
“We’re looking at $2 to 3 million just to do the minor repairs. Then we’ll have to come back in probably another five years and do some more, because there’s always something going wrong with it. [It's the] same thing with a lot of the other buildings that we have,” said Killeen City Commissioner, Jose Segarra.
Plus — many of their employees are scattered throughout the city, and consolidation in one building would put everyone under one roof.
Some Killeen residents say there’s already too many projects going on, plus issues with finding new firefighters and police officers, and fixing roadways.
Council members say that the new City Hall could cost $66 to 80 million — which is why they want to make sure that everyone in the city is informed.
“If we put this on the ballot right now it’s not going to pass. I don’t want to be spending money knowing that it’s not going pass. It just depends on how good of a job we do in educating the public,” Segarra said.
“That level of transparency is really important to me for the citizens. They were ultimately have the final say though,” Gonzalez said.
They plan to vote Tuesday to find out if they will move forward with creating plans for the new City hall.
