Kent City Council
Kent looks to cash in on low interest rates and build new city hall
By Gina Butkovich
News Lab
Kent City Council has been discussing building a new city hall for years. But now, because interest rates are low, it is looking more and more likely that it might happen soon.
Rhonda Hall, the city’s budget and finance director, presented to the panel Wednesday night the plan to pay for the building. Though not all the details are finalized, Hall said the building may cost between $7 million and $8 million. Hall also pointed to historically low interest rates as a reason to speed up the process.
“Borrowing money has never been cheaper, historically,” said Gwen Rosenberg, an at-large council member. “It would be great to take advantage of that. And honestly, we’ve been doing some things such as the design and architecture work, to get up to this point. I would have preferred that we had this conversation even sooner, but now we’re going to have it now.”
Ward 4 Council Member John Kuhar disagrees with the urgency.
“Some other council members say that interest rates are at an all-time low, and we should spend now just in case,” Kuhar said in an email. “Regardless, the $500,000 or $700,000 less interest for an empty buildout is still a large amount to tack on to the taxpayers for something I do not believe we need now or will need in the near future. Government needs to get out of the habit of spending just because they can and need to operate just as we operate our personal lives.”
Hall said the city has recently unloaded some debt obligations and can finance the construction without any new taxes.
“In terms of paying the debt service on a loan in that range, we plan to use a combination of some cash reserves, redirected funds from the recent retirement of the debt service on the West Side Fire Station loan which is now paid off, and annual income tax receipts to cover our debt payment,” Hall said in an email. “As a result of this financing strategy, there will be no new taxes needed to pay for the building, which we believe is imperative in the current economic conditions brought on by the pandemic.”
Rosenberg understands concerns residents might have regarding how the city plans to pay for the building. On Sunday, she posted on Facebook informing residents of the city council meeting. She also provided her contact information for anyone who had questions for her.
“People have asked,” Rosenberg said. “And that’s the big question; how are we going to pay for it? We’re the largest city in the county, it’s appropriate that we have a city hall. But how are we going to pay for it, is it impacted by Covid, is our income tax impacted due to the pandemic? These are all things we need to take into consideration because we’re those stewards of taxpayer dollars. So we want to make sure we flush out these conversations fully and completely.”
In 2018, Service Director Melanie Baker showed council detailed floor plans of the building for the first time. The plan is to build it at the site of Kent’s old police station at 319 S. Water St. Currently, the city council resides at 320 S. Depeyster St., in the basement of the fire station.
“It’s a fire station,” Rosenberg said. “It doesn’t have the same feel as a publicly owned building that as a resident you could walk into and attend a meeting. You want to be able to set up an appointment. If you have a question, you should know where your mayor is, where your city manager is, where your law director is, the law department, things like that. It just opens up that communication and it facilitates a little more dialogue between residents and their local government.”
During the meeting on Wednesday, council members discussed in-depth if the building should have a third floor over the council chambers. In the end, they decided to build the city hall building without the third floor.
Those in favor cited the possibility of expansion, with Ward 1 Council Member Garret Ferrara calling it “foolish” not to build out the space.
“We’ve talked about telecommuting for decades, we’ve talked about the paperless office for decades, and it hasn’t happened,” Ferrara said. “And the reality is, if there’s any one sector of the economy that continues to grow it’s the government. And depending on the election, that could be an even bigger growth.”
Those against the third floor pointed to a recent trend of downsizing and working from home, in addition to the need to be prudent due to economic hardships brought about by Covid-19.
“Without the third floor, it still looks great,” Kuhar said during the meeting. “Everyone who has called me has been opposed to it because they’re thinking about the extra 600,000 or 500,000, and, yes, there’s a 1 or 1.2 percent interest rate on it but you still have the principal payment that you’re paying, and this is not our money; it’s taxpayers’ money.”
Ward 5 Council Member Heidi Shaffer said they should not build a third floor. Shaffer feels in the past the council has been a “courageous” council, by doing things such as starting the downtown project during the Great Recession.
“I’m usually on that side of, let’s be bold, let’s be courageous, let’s do the thing that maybe people don’t really understand, but in the end we’re betting that it’ll be the best move,” Shaffer said during the meeting. “And for the life of me, I cannot find a need for that additional space and I don’t think that it detracts from the building not to have that. We might really show the public here that we’re being courageous in the sense of being prudent this time.”
This article was produced through a reporting partnership with the Collaborative News Lab @ Kent State University.
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