City Council Holds Special Meeting
By: Jason Calder
Updated: August 29, 2007
A special meeting of the San Angelo city council was held at city hall Wednesday to discuss two important topics. They debated about a special election that would ask the voters to decide on more than two dozen amendments to the city charter. The also considered a final bid on the Rio Concho Sports Complex. Jason Calder was at the meeting and has more.The San Angelo city council held a special meeting Wednesday to discuss a possible election.
Mayor J.W. Lown said, "We introduced our first ordinance to call a special election in November, November 6, 2007 to bring forward to the public a city charter amendment election."
The election was approved by the attending city councilors. Mayor J.W. Lown said the election will pose 30 amendments discussed by a charter commission.
Lown said, "Some are unanimously supported by the council, some there are dissent on them but there's clearly enough to bring 30 propositions forward to the people of San Angelo."
One of the main topics of the agenda was the November special election but another agenda item was also discussed. The construction of the Rio Concho Sports Complex.
Parks Director Carl White said, "City Council authorized staff to award the bid to Consolidated Contractors for the construction of the Rio Concho Sports Complex and community park."
The park will cost $7.9 million but the total project price tag is a little over $9 million. City Parks Director Carl White says they've worked hard for four years to get a contract in place.
White said, "We've done a lot of due diligence, trying to figure out what's the best we could do boil the project down and save some money. Essentially what we're going to get is a home for three different sports associations, the Adult Softball Association, the Girl's Fast Pitch Association and Southern Little League. It will be a total of 15 fields, 12 softball fields and three little league fields. We'll also have some community park elements. This will be our second community park."
So when will construction start? Mayor Lown said there's one more step to be completed.
Lown said, "I'm going to sign the contract on the Rio Concho Sports Center and that will be put in motion and the contractors to move dirt and to build up our complex so we'll have one a complex that we will be proud of."
Once the shovel hits the dirt, it will take 425 days before the complex and park are complete. The majority of the money from the sports complex is coming from the half cent sales tax projects. A donation was also made by the Health Foundation.
