By Mike Norman
mnorman@star-telegram.com
If there's anything North Texas officials should have learned about Bill Tate during the more than three decades he's been mayor of Grapevine, it's that he will fight fiercely for his town and its residents.
So no one should have been surprised that Tate balked earlier this month when representatives of the North Central Texas Council of Governments asked the Grapevine City Council to endorse a broadly outlined plan for commuter rail service on the Cotton Belt line through the city. The proposed service would run 62 miles between southwest Fort Worth and Plano.
Here's the problem: Grapevine residents voted in 2006 to devote part of their sales tax revenue for Cotton Belt commuter rail service linking their city with southwest Fort Worth and DFW Airport. They send about $8 million a year to the Fort Worth Transportation Authority, the T, for what's now called TEX Rail, Tate said.
So far, the city has contributed $37.9 million.
Tate and some others in Grapevine already have been a little peeved about TEX Rail delays. When they voted for the project in 2006, it was touted for completion in five or six years -- right about now. That timeline has slipped to 2016 at the earliest.
In 2006 the estimated cost was $330 million. Today it's $960 million, with about half to come from a hoped-for federal grant.
"It's obvious now that the way this was originally proposed isn't going to happen," Tate told me. "Contractually, Grapevine can't get out of it, but people need to explain it to us."
That's why he hit the roof during a Dec. 18 City Council meeting. NCTCOG transportation experts are proposing a new wrinkle, an extension of Cotton Belt commuter rail service to Plano at an additional cost estimated at $1.2 billion. The idea is that the cost would be born by a private company that would recoup its investment by tapping into a revenue stream generated by real estate developments near the train stations.
There are no details yet about how all of that would work, but the NCTCOG experts still asked the Grapevine council to join other cities in support of the plan. Bad idea. They should know Tate better than that.
"This could be something that changes the whole deal," he told me. Tate makes his living as an attorney, so he knows the dangers of signing on to something without details.
"We have a responsibility to ask questions and know more about what we're doing," he said. "Once you get into it, there's no getting out."
He wants to know, for example, whether the private company behind the service to Plano will want to tap any future revenue from real estate developments in Grapevine that might be somehow connected to the station there.
That's a more-than-reasonable question. The experts from NCTCOG say they don't have the answer, because they've received no formal proposal yet from the private company that has expressed interest in the Cotton Belt project.
So with no details, they took a proposal to the man who has fought battle after battle during some 36 years as mayor, protecting what he sees as Grapevine's best interests.
Almost literally, Tate threw it back at them.
After calming down a bit, he told me he still believes TEX Rail "needs to happen."
"But you have to be honest with the people," he said. "If I have to go to them and tell them it's going to take 10 more years, that's what I'll do."
Mike Norman is editorial director of the Star-Telegram.817-390-7830Twitter: @mnorman9
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