Broderick McGee sits with the city council for the first time after being sworn in during a city council meeting at City Hall in Tyler, Texas, on Wednesday, May 16, 2018. (Chelsea Purgahn/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

The city of Tyler made changes this year after financial trends bucked previous years and the city saw increased revenue from taxes and fees.

The city ended the 2018 fiscal year in September with a 6.4 percent increase in sales tax revenue. The City Council also voted to raise property taxes and other fees to fund services, fill positions that had been left open and give raises to employees.

The city made long-term plans to modernize the traffic signal system in response to concerns about congestion and tossed out plans to build a hotel and conference center.

New budget lifts hiring freeze, staff pay, taxes

Tyler City Council’s budget for the new fiscal year lifted a hiring freeze that had been in place for years while the city responded to declining sales tax revenue. Lifting the freeze affected about a dozen positions that had been left open.

Employees were offered either a 1.5 percent raise on their base pay or a 2.5 percent raise paid as quarterly bonuses. It was the first time in years they were offered raises. City Manager Ed Broussard, whose salary had been frozen for years, received a 5 percent pay increase and increased benefits.

The changes were made possible by a combination of increased sales tax revenue and revenue generated by a property tax rate increase. And those increases were good news to a handful of residents who showed up at a public hearing to say the city needed to raise property taxes to run the city properly.

Construction begins on fire stations

After years of planning, the city awarded contracts and broke ground on two new fire stations valued at $7.8 million total.

Fire Station No. 1 will be on the corner of Palace Avenue and West Gentry Parkway and combine existing services out of locations on Elm Street in downtown and a station on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Fire Station No. 4 will be on Cherryhill Drive near West Cumberland Road and Jack Elementary School. This new location will serve a rapidly growing area.

Broderick McGee joins City Council

Broderick McGee, the human resources manager of Kluber Lubrication, won a seat in May on the City Council. He succeeded Darryl Bowdre, who served the maximum number of terms.

McGee represents District 2, which includes neighborhoods near Earl Campbell Parkway, South Southwest Loop 323, a portion of West Front Street and portions of Glenwood Boulevard.

McGee defeated community activist Beverly Beavers-Brooks by a vote of 269-230. Also on the May ballot, Mayor Martin Heines won his third and final term against perennial candidate Joel Rando.

Traffic solutions prioritized

With traffic on the mind of residents, the city participated in an exploratory project to make changes to a roughly 5-mile strip of South Broadway Avenue between Loop 323 and Toll 49.

The Texas Department of Transportation said conceptual changes could include overpasses, exit ramps and widening the road to four lanes in each direction. It could be several years before construction begins.

Heines directed the city staff to work on replacing and modernizing traffic signals citywide. That resulted in the City Council funding to study how to modernize the traffic signal system. The study is on track to move forward in early 2019.

In a survey released in December, residents gave the city’s handling of traffic congestion the worst grade out of 17 categories of city services. City Council members made a point to reassure residents that they are working on the issue.

Hotel and conference center 

After spending nearly 30 years planning to build some type of events center in Tyler, and several years after the city acquired land near the Village at Cumberland Park to build a hotel and conference center, those plans went away.

Early in the year, the city staff worked with a consulting firm to consider whether to put a hotel and conference center in a different part of the city. The firm’s suggestion was to put one at the Rose Complex on West Front Street.

In March, the City Council declined to approve spending money to study that suggestion after developers came forward and expressed disapproval. Since then, no plans have been made public for the city to build a new hotel and conference center.

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