Results of the April 11th meeting

Mayor Bill Weber opened the meeting at 5:31 pm, and Mayor pro tem Gil Lillard gave the invocation.

The first agenda item was to hear from visitors, and there were several there to address the Council on the state of the hotel business in Woodway and what might be done about it.

First came Scott Joslove, President of the State Lodging Association. He was in Woodway at the request of the local hotel owners. He stated that occupancy rates were only in the 40-50% range, not high enough for the establishments to get by for the long term (which would require > 60% occupancy). He suggested that Woodway work with the hotels to help increase business, for example, by giving a discount on Arboretum rentals to groups who book a block of rooms at any of the six local hotels. He pointed out that the City had only recently realized that it needed to spend ~ 15% of the hotel occupancy tax revenue on advertising, rather than the ~ 1% that had been used for this for the past few years. [The error came to light as a result of an accusation by Woodway resident Mike O'Bric, which I investigated last summer and brought to City Attorney Mike Dixon's attention.] Mr. Dixon was present to explain the misunderstanding; the wording of the law is somewhat unclear (I agree) on whether the amount required to go toward advertising was based on the room rate or on the actual tax revenue, and several cities have erred in exactly the same way, unintentionally. Mr. Joslove suggested that perhaps some of the funds that were to have gone to advertising over the past few years could be put toward this purpose now. He encouraged the City to discuss these possibilities with the local hotel owners.

Note: As of the 2011 fiscal year, the City has been spending the required amount (~ $50k/year) on advertising. Natalie Edwards (Assistant to the City Manager) has been at the forefront of this effort, and has developed and distributed some really well-designed advertisements.

Next was Nathan Camp, General Manager of the Best Western in Woodway. He is proud to be part of Woodway, but the past few years have been rough on the hotel business. In particular, he has 25 employees to take care of. He said the local hotels "need the marketing" and have ideas on ways the City can help.

Then Rashmi Patel of the Holiday Inn Express came to say that since 2007 his occupancy rates have been declining by 10% each year and are currently at 50%, resulting in a loss of $20k per month. He would like to see the local hotels be part of the decision-making process, and they have a lot of experience to bring to this problem. He stated that an average visitor that stayed in a local hotel would be expected to spend about $225 total in and around the city, but less than half that if they did not stay locally. Mr. Patel stated that well-targeted advertising generally gives a 7-fold return, that there are approximately 125 employees of the six local hotels, and that these hotels pay a lot of property taxes.

Finally, Rajiv Patel of the La Quinta came to lament that there has been no process for dialog between hotels and the City. He asked what the City wants from the Hotels.(?)

City Manager Yost Zakhary responded to the Council that there had been four meetings with the hotel folks this year, that advertisement options had been discussed and even decided upon. He pointed out that the City offers the hotels superb public safety and that the crime rate in Woodway is relatively low. City staff were surprised by the sudden concern of the hoteliers after a good deal of recent very amiable dialog.

There is a recent Waco Tribune Herald story about hotel occupancy tax uses here (but paid subscription required to view it).

Next was a quarterly presentation of the Woodway Public Safety Department by Assistant Chief Robert Smith. There were many statistics, some encouraging and some not. For example, Woodway burglary/theft rates in Woodway exceed those in Hewitt, but Woodway is much better than Hewitt in every other respect (page 38 of the 2010 report).

Next was budget overview, dealing mostly with the Family Center, Arboretum and City debt. City debt is mostly a result of larger, expensive projects like water and sewer installation/renovation.

Item #4 was "notice of intent" to issue bonds up to $2.5M to fund the Arboretum expansion. Jason Hughes of First Southwest was present to answer questions. I expressed some concern about the reliability of the hotel occupancy tax revenues, which are to be used to repay the bonds. I had assumed that a worst-case-scenario would be that the Woodway hotel revenue remained constant, but some of the visitors tonight had suggested that it was possible that poorly-performing hotels might be closed. Yost Zakhary assured the Council that this was unlikely and that, while there was some real risk in issuing bonds, enough contingencies had been taken into account to make serious financial problems only a remote possibility. After a discussion of pros and cons, the Council voted unanimously to proceed.

Item 5 was for the Council to provide City staff guidance about the possiblity of "mixed use" zoning, for example, in Badger Ranch. The purpose of mixed use zoning would be to allow apartments along with retail in these areas. Councilman Don Baker asked why we would want any more apartments in Woodway, and gave a convincing case for not allowing such. The Council discussed this for a while and I think pretty much uniformly agreed that apartments are to be avoided for reasons of increased crime, poor upkeep and lower property values. (there was a joke about putting Councilman Scibielski's name on the next set of apartments built in Woodway, "Scibielski Arms Apartments"!) But the Council was amenable to allowing single-family homes on smaller lots should that be proposed.

Item 6 was the "consent agenda". Of the several items, two received significant discussion. The replacement of protective vests for the Special Response Team is necessary since the manufacturer warrants these for only five years. There was much discussion on whether these were really in need of being replaced. Mayor Weber described his time in Iraq, with many troops and few vests; he could have used out-of-warranty vests then! Interestingly, these vests weigh a minimum of 25 pounds each, and about 15 pounds more with the ceramic plates installed. Some information can be found here. Incidentally, these vests protect against knife attacks as well as bullets, etc.

The second item was replacement of the Rescue Truck. The recommendation was the result of a 10-person committee of Woodway officers and volunteers, including all of the volunteers Gil Lillard and I had met with last June (here). Many hours of study, discussion and even testing had been done to arrive at the recommendation. The cost is significant ($331k) but lasts for a decade or more, and is needed to carry the amounts of equipment the men need. This committee deserves recognition for their hard work over and above their regular duties.

Item 7 was approval of the consent agenda (unanimous).

The meeting adjourned at 7:13 pm.