Category: City & County Politics

By Anton Riecher
A proposed change in legislation that restricts appraisal districts from financing the purchase of property required a closed executive session by the Medina County Appraisal District Board of Directors May 14 to confer by telephone with its attorney.
In question was whether a “conduit organization” would be required as an intermediary or fiscal agent in MCAD’s purchase of a 4,900 square-foot building in Hondo to serve as replacement for the present MCAD office space leased from Medina County.
Devine ISD school board cast the deciding vote on a new home for MCAD April 29 when it sanctioned a resolution approving the purchase. The board became the thirteenth of 15 eligible taxing entities to vote in favor of the purchase, the required supermajority needed to authorize acquisition.
According to MCAD Chief Appraiser Johnette Dixon, the Texas tax code states that the board of directors “may purchase or lease property and may construct improvements as necessary to establish and operate the appraisal office or a branch appraisal office.”
An amendment under consideration by the 89th Texas Legislature would add the word “finance” to the phrase “may purchase or lease property,” giving appraisal districts the direct authority to negotiate financing for property acquisition, Dixon said.
Without that amendment, MCAD will be required to go through a conduit organization such as Government Capital Corp., specialists in public finance, to negotiate financing to purchase the Hondo office complex known as “The Ridge” to be the district’s future home. Located at 728 18th Street, the property was the former home of the Hill Country Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Center.
The board conducted the telephone conference with attorney Matthew Tepper with McCreary Veselka Bragg & Allen.
In other business related to the purchase, the board approved hiring an engineering firm to conduct an asbestos inspection of the property prior to closing on the purchase, expected to happen before the end of the month.
“The city of Hondo is going to require us to have this ready to go,” said appraisal board chair Cynthia Malone.
Dixon said even though the inspection is required, asbestos is not expected to be a problem since the building underwent a complete renovation in 2009. Cost of the new inspection will be $4,128.
“If there was anything they would have found it at that point,” she said.
The board also reaffirmed its hiring of Hondo-based Paddle Creek Design as architect on the remodeling of a 4,620 square foot portion of the property to accommodate appraisal district operations, including 13 offices and a hearing room for property value protests that will go into immediate use in June.
Leases on the remaining portion of the property purchases will not expire until July 2026.
Malone said that other than the purchase of furniture, remodeling of the hearing room will likely be postponed until after the expected summer wave of protest hearing subsides.
The approved price tag for architect Thomas Oppelt’s work on the project is $35,000. Although the board approved the hiring of Oppelt and the quoted bid, board member Harold Galm said he would have preferred to see bids from two or more competing firms.
Several firms discussed the project with MCAD, but Paddle Creek Design was the only one to submit a bid for the project.
With regard to appraisal district business, Dixon reported that MCAD has posted 28,000 appraisal notices this month for real property, with another 1,000 covering personal property to be posted soon. Of those notices, 180 protests have already been filed by property owners, thanks largely to a new on-line internet portal provided by MCAD.
Property tax protest hearings are expected to start June 23, Dixon said.
To date, MCAD has collected 56.9 percent of its expected income from the taxing entities it represents, she said. Of that amount, MCAD’s total expenses to date make up 39.1 percent of its budgeted income.
Among those budgeted expenses is the purchase of five new computers to replace aging equipment that cannot be updated from the present Windows 10 system, Dixon said.