Bexar County’s newly adopted budget won’t increase the tax rate, but employee raises and some projects had to be delayed.
Two of those projects were previously highlighted in our News 4 I-Team Waste Watch.
Back in June, we told you about digital kiosks the county installed downtown. They’ve been broken and covered up for two years and there wasn’t enough money in this budget to fix or replace them.
The six kiosks used to provide free Wi-Fi downtown and give directions to visitors. The county paid $565,000 to purchase and install them back in 2017.
After a few years of operation, they stopped working and the manufacturer went out of business.
The county had planned to upgrade and increase the number of kiosks. Now staff will have to figure out what to do with the broken ones.
“Whether or not we can remove the old ones and maybe cap the fiber that’s still buried in the ground and then at a future time maybe replace them,” said Bexar County spokesperson Monica Ramos.
Then there’s the office tower off 410 and Fredericksburg that was recently purchased by the county for $7 million using eminent domain.
It will eventually house the Precinct 2 Constable, JP Court, and tax office.
“The new Precinct 2 building has already started having staff move into it. However, to be able to accommodate the Justice of the Peace and the constable’s office, they’ll probably need to be some upgrades. There were no upgrades that were funded this go around,” Ramos said.
So, county commissioners this week approved a new lease of the current Precinct 2 offices on Guilbeau Rd. which is costing taxpayers $44 thousand a month.
Bexar County is also battling a lawsuit filed by a current tenant of the building, ECPI University, which claims the county doesn’t have the right to evict it from the tower.
The county says it did include a provision allowing it to end the lease once the office tower is completed, but as of now the county has no estimate of when that will be.