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November / December 2011
Volume 23, Number 6

Building Support

Why do some communities support courthouse construction projects while others refuse?

By Mary Alice Robbins

The four-story, approximately 130,000- square-foot building recently completed on land adjacent to Interstate 30 in Rockwall County stirs strong feelings among county residents. Featuring a dome on top, the structure is the new Rockwall County Courthouse, a project which some residents believe they rejected in back-to-back bond elections in 2004 and 2005.

“Some people love the new courthouse,” said Rockwall County Judge Jerry Hogan. “Some people hate it.”

Rockwall County’s experience is not unique. While some counties seem to have no trouble winning public support for bonds to build courthouses, others encounter stiff opposition to such projects. So what does it take to win voter approval? The experiences of Rockwall and Collin counties, both located in North Texas, may provide some insight.

On Sept. 6, Collin County opened a two-story, approximately 170,000-square-foot addition to its courthouse. The addition is the second courthouse construction project in less than a decade that the county has funded with voter-approved bonds. In 2003, Collin County voters overwhelmingly approved $54 million in bonds to build a 300,000-square-foot courthouse. Four years later, the county’s voters gave thumbs up to issuing $47 million in bonds for construction of an office building added to the back of the courthouse. Collin County Commissioner Joe Jaynes said neither project required a tax increase because the county’s growth in recent years has expanded its tax base.

Rockwall County officials began moving into their new courthouse in October. Lisa Constant, the county’s auditor, said Rockwall County also has experienced significant growth, enabling the commissioners court to build the courthouse without increasing taxes.

But getting the courthouse built has not been easy. In 2004, Rockwall County voters rejected a proposal to issue $29 million in bonds to build a facility identified on the ballot as a county government complex. In the same election, voters approved bonds for a new library but voted down the government complex bonds by almost 58 percent of the votes. County officials tried again in 2005 to win voter approval for the project only to have it defeated by an almost 2-to-1 margin.

Former Rockwall County Judge Chris Florance said state officials subsequently declared the county’s interim courthouse “grossly out of compliance” with state fire codes. The building also failed to meet safety requirements under the jail standards, Florance said. In his opinion, something had to be done.

“I decided the welfare of our people was more important than politics,” said Florance, who believes his efforts to get the courthouse built despite voters’ rejection of the bonds led to his defeat in 2010. In May 2008, the Rockwall County Commissioners Court voted 3-to-2 to issue $30 million in tax anticipation notes to fund construction of a courthouse. The two commissioners who voted against issuing the tax notes — Lorie Grinnen and David Magness — won re-election in 2010. Florance, who voted for the notes, ran third in a four-man Republican primary.

Tom Pollan, an Austin attorney who counsels counties and municipalities on public finance issues, said a governmental body can use tax anticipation notes to fund a project without seeking voter approval. Tax anticipation notes provide a much faster way to obtain funding than passing bonds for a project. Pollan said that bond elections can be held only on certain dates and the governmental body may face a wait of up to a year before it can put a proposal on the ballot. State law requires repayment of tax anticipation notes within seven years, although a county can opt to refinance them.

Certificates of obligation are another option for financing public projects. With that option, however, the governmental body must publish notice of its intent to issue the certificates, and voters can petition for an election to be held. If 5 percent of the voters in a county sign the petition for an election, the issue must be submitted to voters for approval.

The tax anticipation notes did not cover all the costs for Rockwall County’s new courthouse. On a 4-1 vote in December 2009, the commissioners court agreed to take $7.2 million out of the county’s reserve fund for the project.

Hogan said he campaigned on the courthouse issue when he won election in 2010, defeating Florance and two other candidates in the Republican primary but now supports the new facility. “There was and is a need for a new courthouse in Rockwall, unequivocally,” he said.

So why the different reaction from taxpayers? Although both counties are located in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Collin County is a large suburban county, while smaller Rockwall County is more rural.

However, the two counties have similar demographics and are Republican, backing John McCain over Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, both counties have predominantly white populations. Almost 72 percent of Collin County’s population is white and almost 84 percent of the population in Rockwall County is white.

Both counties experienced significant growth in the past decade. The Census Bureau reported that both counties were among the 30 fastest growing counties in the United States from 2000 to 2010. Collin County’s population increased by about 59 percent over the decade, going from about 492,000 in 2000 to more than 782,000 by 2010. Rockwall County’s population went from about 43,000 in 2000 to more than 78,000 by 2010, an almost 82 percent increase. The Census Bureau’s statistics show that both counties have largely middle-class populations. In 2009, the median household income was $77,905 in Collin County and $77,924 in Rockwall County, compared to $48,286 for Texas as a whole. Both counties also have few people living in poverty. Only 7.1 percent of the people in Collin County and 6.6 percent of those in Rockwall County live below the poverty level, as compared to 17.1 percent for the state.

The Census Bureau also reported that Collin and Rockwall counties have a higher percentage of college graduates than the Texas average. About 47 percent of Collin County’s residents who are 25 or older have a bachelor’s or higher degree, while about 34 percent of Rockwall County’s residents over age 25 have one or more college degrees. On average, only about 25 percent of Texans hold a bachelor’s or higher degree.

Despite the similarities of the two counties, voters in Collin and Rockwall counties reacted differently when presented bond proposals to build new courthouses. Collin County Precinct 3 Commissioner Joe Jaynes attributed voter approval for the 2003 and 2007 bond proposals held in his county to county officials’ decision to seek public input on the county’s facility needs and the fact that the projects could be done without tax increases. Prior to both bond elections, the commissioners court appointed citizen committees that studied not only the need for new facilities but also the fiscal feasibility of the projects before making recommendations to the commissioners court. The fact that fellow citizens recommended the projects encouraged buy-in for the bond proposals by the voters, he said.

“You see a lot of counties lose bond projects because there was no buying in by the public,” Jaynes said. “You’ve got to get citizen buy-in from the very beginning.”

Bill Bilyeau, Collin County’s director of administration services, said the commissioners court began appointing citizen advisory committees to study the county’s needs and make recommendations on bond programs after voters rejected bonds for a new county jail in the late 1980s. Bilyeau said county officials encountered organized opposition to the bond program even though the old jail was not in compliance with state regulations.

However, the commissioners court found a way to build a new jail without incurring voters’ wrath. In 1988, the commissioners court formed a 29-member citizens advisory committee to review the needs for the future of the sheriff’s office and detention facility. After a 10-month study, the committee recommended that a new detention facility and sheriff’s office were needed. The commissioners court approved the committee’s recommendations. Bilyeau says that in 1989, the commissioners court created the Collin County Jail Financing Corp., which issued $49 million in certificates of obligation to build the jail.

In 2003, the commissioners court created a citizen advisory committee that included subcommittees to study Collin County’s transportation, parks and facility needs. Bilyeau said that voters passed all the bond proposals on the ballot that year, including $54 million to build a three-story courthouse. Voters approved the courthouse along with other facility projects by a vote of 61.5 percent to 38.5 percent, Bilyeau said.

Bill Burke, Collin County’s building project manager, said the courthouse, which opened in August 2007, is now home for the nine state district courts, felony prosecutors and criminal district clerk staff. The six county courts at law and probate court will move into the courthouse in the summer of 2012, Burke said.

Bilyeau said the commissioners court created another citizen advisory committee in 2007. At the recommendation of the subcommittee on facilities, the commissioners court placed a $47 million bond proposal on the November 2007 ballot for the construction of an addition to the courthouse.

Jaynes said the commissioners court decided to do the construction projects in two stages because of the costs and the need. He said the additional space was not needed when voters approved the bonds for the courthouse in 2003 and that trying to do all the construction with one bond program could have had an effect on the tax rate.

“I’m not sure the voters would have gone for it,” Jaynes said. “I think that doing it in stages was the more prudent way to go.”

The new addition currently houses the Collin County District Attorney’s Office, District Clerk’s Office and law library and eventually will house adult probation offices and a cafeteria. According to Collin County election results, bonds for the courthouse addition were passed by more than 68 percent of the vote.

“I think they understood the need,” Collin County public information spokesman Tim Wyatt said when asked why he thinks the voters demonstrated such strong support for both the 2003 and 2007 bond proposals.

“This is a very highly educated, very high-tech suburban county,” Wyatt said. “They (county residents) want things to work properly.”

The chairman of the 2007 subcommittee on facilities, civil engineer Bill Mills of Fairview, said the people who vote in Collin County are very knowledgeable and ask “really insightful questions” about proposed bond projects. If voters are told why a project is needed and are shown the economic feasibility of a project, they will support it, Mills said. He said the 10-member subcommittee, which was made up of residents in diverse fields and from communities across the county, spent about six months studying potential projects.

Rockwall County officials did not appoint a citizens advisory committee to review the government complex project before submitting the proposal to voters in 2004 and 2005. Precinct 1 Commissioner Jerry Wimpee said appointing a blue-ribbon committee to accomplish what the commissioners court wants to do is “big-city politics” but would not work in Rockwall County with its smaller population.

Jaynes said Collin County Commissioners Court did not tell the subcommittees that recommended bond projects in 2003 and 2007 what to do. “The citizens committees had expert help, but the citizens committees chose the projects,” he said.

Mills said, “We were independent to a degree. They (county officials) didn’t give us a whole lot of guidance. They did give us access to divisions of county government that might need facilities.”

Bruce Beaty, former Precinct 3 commissioner in Rockwall County, said county officials had sent out mailers about the government complex proposal in 2004 and 2005. Beaty said county officials also made presentations to civic organizations on the pros and cons of the project but that state law prohibits government from advocating for bond proposals. He said members of the Friends of the Library, who had been successful in winning support for the library project in 2004, helped get the word out about the government complex proposal in 2005, and the local bar association lent its support to the effort.

“But we just never did get any grassroots support,” Beaty said. Voters voiced varying reasons for opposing the project, including objections to building the courthouse on the I-30 property that the county had acquired in 2000. Ken Jones, a former mayor of Rockwall and an unsuccessful county judge candidate in 2010, said that building the courthouse at that location removed prime real estate from the tax rolls.

“It was the most valuable real estate in the county of Rockwall,” Jones said.

Jones said the commissioners court could have built the courthouse on property near the county jail. But Wimpee said vacant property near the jail was not large enough for the courthouse.

Charles Kearns, a principal in Wiginton Hooker Jeffrys Architects in Plano who has worked with counties on bond projects, said education is the key to winning public support for such projects, and the education process may need to include telling the people the role the courthouse plays in a community.

“The public really doesn’t understand what a court does,” Kearns said. “They don’t understand that they (county officials) are not trying to build a castle for the judges.”

Kearns also said it is important for all members of the commissioners court to be on the same page to inspire the public’s trust. “If two members of the court say, ‘We don’t need it at all,’ and three say, ‘We do,’ both sides can’t be right,” he said.

John Daly, professor of communications at the University of Texas in Austin, said county officials should consider the following fiv

e issues when trying to persuade the public to vote for bonds to build a courthouse or other projects:

• Timing is important. Daly said county officials must answer the “why now” question when proposing to build a new courthouse. Propositions succeed where the proponents are able to create the why now for the project in people’s minds, he said.
  
  
• Tell the people why the project is important to them. A new courthouse could produce a more efficient court system.
  
  
• Identify key leaders within the county who would tout a project. Daly said the people in a community who affect voters’ opinions can range from barbers and hairdressers to newspaper editors.
  
  
• Create a label and an image for a bond program. Daly said a bond issue could be identified as a positive step forward by using the slogan: “It’s not a cost; it’s an investment.”
  
  
• Explain to the public what will happen if the county does not build a courthouse. Daly pointed out that if construction costs are escalating, the costs of a project could be more in five years than if built today.

However, even a well-executed education program may not result in passage of a bond issue.

In 2006, Kaufman County voters rejected a $21.5 million bond proposal for a new courts facility. Former Kaufman County Judge Wayne Gent said the commissioners court appointed a citizens committee to talk about the need for a courts building. But Gent said some members of the committee opposed the project and spoke against it.

Bruce Wood, who has been the Kaufman County judge since January, said the commissioners court has not taken any other action to build a courthouse despite overcrowding in the current facility, which houses four courts. “We are going to have to do something,” Wood said.