Cedar Hill, school district vow to share, save

September 19, 2005

Sunday, September 18, 2005
By HERB BOOTH / The Dallas Morning News

The city of Cedar Hill and the school district are beyond walking down the aisle. They’re about to seal their unusual marriage with a kiss.

The council and school board next week are scheduled to approve a $25 million, 119,000-square-foot joint facility that would house Cedar Hill’s new City Hall, police station, municipal courts and school district administration under one roof.

The facility – which will be on Uptown Boulevard across the street from the new movie theater – should be ready by late 2007.
Cedar Hill

“We’ve asked a couple of times speak now or forever hold your peace, and no one has spoken up, so I guess that’s a good sign,” Cedar Hill Mayor Rob Franke said. “It took a lot of good-hearted people doing a good handshake deal to make this happen.”

Although joint-use agreements, consortiums and shared facilities are not unusual, this type of setup is atypical, said state officials, who were hard-pressed to find similar examples elsewhere in Texas. There are several examples across the nation where schools share facilities with a city’s parks and recreation department for after-school activities. There also are schools within businesses, shared libraries and shared swimming pools. But there are few examples of shared municipal and school district facilities.

Whole lot of sharing

Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Duncanville and Lancaster do share some services. Three of the cities share a dispatch center, while others in the group share DeSoto’s jail and a regional animal shelter.

Art Stone, the Cedar Hill project manager who works for Hunt Construction Group, said he hadn’t seen anything like this venture in his travels across the nation.

“The project represents dollars they don’t have to spend twice,” Mr. Stone said. “It is quite unique.”

The mayor said former council member Al Armistead initially suggested the shared facility several years ago.

“I think it benefits all the taxpayers,” Mr. Armistead said. “In these days and times, you should share as many things as you can. With gas headed to $3 a gallon, you have to think that way.”

Mr. Armistead said he attended a school board meeting several years ago and thought that the district – like the city – needed a new administrative building.

The school district administration building opened in 1956. The city complex was built in 1961.

Cedar Hill City Manager Alan Sims said he doesn’t know why combined projects like this aren’t done more often.

“There’s so much upside, so many positives,” Mr. Sims said. “Instead of having separate council and school board chambers, you have one. We’ll share computer rooms.”

In all, the joint facility will have about 22,000 square feet in shared space. The entities also will share a receptionist, lobby area, break rooms, copy centers, conference rooms, City Council/school board chambers and other areas. The city and school district already share computer resources and a phone system.

Mr. Sims said the city and Cedar Hill Independent School District would save about $4 million in the first year by building the joint facility. The district will pay $6.4 million into the project from 1999 and 2001 bond referendums. The city will pay for the remainder from a 2003 bond election.

Cedar Hill schools Superintendent Jim Gibson said future shared functions could include payroll and personnel.

Timing was right

School board President Randy Gaubert said the timing was right for the project in that both entities needed facilities at the same time.

“There’s a unique bond between our school district and city,” Mr. Gaubert said. “We realize we’re all in this together. A lot of times school districts and city governments don’t get along too well. There are turf battles. They don’t like each other butting into the other’s way.”

That scenario has apparently played out in other communities.

Last year, the Carroll school board asked the city of Southlake to share its chambers for meetings last year. Southlake’s council denied the request because it felt the city facilities weren’t set up for that type of arrangement. The Southlake council majority also said not all the city’s taxpayers were part of the Carroll school district. Carroll school board members thought it would be financially advantageous to the taxpayers not to have to pay for facilities twice.

Cedar Hill’s Mr. Gaubert is glad his community soon won’t have to deal with that situation.

“Why duplicate meeting rooms?” he said. “If we have a specially called meeting that coincides with a council meeting, we’ll go to a conference room,” he said. “It’s not about how much paneling is in the room where you’re meeting.”

E-mail hbooth@dallasnews.com