BURLESON – The Burleson City Council discussed changes to the Burleson Police Department headquarters expansion at its meeting Monday at City Hall.

City council opted to vote on approving a final plan on March 25 after a report showing major updates—including the cost increasing to $44 million from the original $41.5 million approved in October 2023—on the design development and renderings and schematics of what the new expansion will entail was given to city council at the meeting Monday.

Construction is expected to begin in September after city council approves a new plan at the March 25 meeting.

City council originally approved a $41.5 million plan in October 2023, but no construction on the project has begun.

Burleson voters approved a $36 million general-obligation bond to fund the police department-headquarters expansion in 2021.

The city postponed a $5 million reconstruction project on Greenridge Drive and Wicker Hill set to begin in 2025 to fund the expansion.

The new $44 million cost is 3.1% higher than the $42.7 million budgeted for the project.

The plan’s updates include building a two-story, 28,170-square-foot building rather than the originally-planned one-story building. The Public Safety Communications team will now be located in the new building on the second floor with property and evidence now being located in a secondary new building.

Deputy city manager Eric Oscarson and police chief Billy Cordell presented to city council options to change or reduce the plans to bring it into budget at Monday’s meeting.

Those options included increasing the project budget and the capital-improvement plan to build it as designed and amending the plan.

City council will meet again on March 3 at City Hall before approving an updated police-department headquarter-expansion plan on March 25.

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BURLESON — The Burleson City Council convened February 3 at City Hall for discussions about pending trash changes, a potential change for the new Dairy Queen and purchases for the Fire Department.

Council listens to citizens, postpones trash-service changes until 2029

At February 3’s meeting, the council decided to postpone any changes to the city’s trash services until 2029 after discussing the changes with each other and with citizens.

The changes — first brought up at the January 6 council meeting — included changes to the number of pickups per week, mandating the use of a cart and the addition of hazardous-waste removal, which would have resulted in a decrease of what citizens pay per month from $24.23 to around $19 per month.

Several citizen speakers expressed disagreement with the changes at February 3’s meeting.

In a perfect demonstration of how government is supposed to work, hundreds of citizens spoke out, reaching out to the council via email, posting on Facebook, showing up to the meetings, and more, and because of that, the Council has decided to postpone any changes until the current contract expires in 2029.

Councilmember Adam Russell (Place 6) suggested postponing changes until 2029 but mentioned that “citizens need to expect the bag service to go away with the new contract.”

This could mean that even though exchanging bags for carts was one of the biggest complaints, cart-exclusive service could likely be our future with the way that the market is going.

Councilmembers Victoria Johnson (Place 1) and Alexa Boedeker (Place 3) concurred with Russell. Boedeker added that the council was going to make the changes “to save [citizens] money.”

Councilmember Dan McClendon (Place 5) said he will err on the side of what the citizens want even if it’s more expensive. He also mentioned that he always wants to spend the citizens’ money responsibly.

Council approves fire-department ambulance purchases

The council approved the Burleson Fire Department purchasing two new ambulances for $832,000 at the February 3 meeting.

Fire Chief Casey Davis said the ambulances will help increase the fire department’s reliability as the fire department is averaging a 19% year-over-year call-volume growth — far outpacing cities of similar size.

The council also approved the purchase of a new sewer vacuum truck for the public works department for $517,000.

Council tables Dairy Queen’s sign request

The council decided to table making a decision on a sign request from the Dairy Queen at 1620 Southwest Wilshire Boulevard.

The applicants requested to put in a pole-style sign closer to the street than the city ordinance allows due to the required monument-style sign being expensive to maintain if the city needed to perform sewer repairs.

City staff could not recommend approval due to the two variances requested, but the council shelved the item to discuss after the city explores putting a “sleeve” on the sewer line to prevent potential issues in the future.

The city attorney mentioned that the city — based on the Texas Constitution — can’t provide financial assistance directly to a private development and that any potential changes will require the applicant to be liable.

The applicant said they understand that possibility and appreciate the council coming up with a potential solution with the sleeve.

Next meeting

The council is scheduled to meet again February 17 at City Hall.

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BURLESON — The Burleson City Council discussed updating city-trash services, new water and wastewater leak-detection technology and possible new fees and Monday at City Hall in its first meeting of 2025.

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BURLESON – The Burleson City Council approved a project to widen Alsbury Boulevard and directed city staff to update the street asset-management program to repair Hidden Creek Parkway, Renfro Street and Alsbury sooner than initially planned Monday at City Hall.

The council unanimously approved the $2.7 million project to widen Alsbury from Hulen Street to Candler Drive and directed city staff to pull $700,000 from the $2.3 million budget for year-one of the street asset-management program to focus on fixing multiple locations along Hidden Creek, Renfro and Alsbury. 

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The Alsbury-widening project will include constructing outside lanes, a 10-foot shared-use path, modifying the railroad crossing on that road segment and undergrounding electrical lines at the north side of the project. 

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JOHNSON COUNTY — Johnson County voters elected to approve a $60 million transportation bond in Tuesday’s election.

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BURLESON — Burleson voters elected to allow liquor stores to operate in Burleson in the local election Tuesday.

13,889 Burleson residents voted for allowing liquor stores while 6,752 voted against it, according to the unofficial results published by the city Wednesday.

Burleson City Council approved holding a special local-option election for the allowance of liquor stores to operate in Burleson after 5,505 signatures on a local option-election petition were verified and accepted by the city February 27, meeting the 5,430-signature requirement to order the election. The signatures were submitted February 2 before the February 5 deadline.

11,359 of the favorable votes and 5,659 of the votes against came from Johnson County residents while 2,521 favorable votes and 1,093 votes against came from Tarrant County residents.

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BURLESON – The Burleson City Council discussed egret-deterrence plans and upcoming changes to the Burleson Recreation Center and Centennial Park October 21 at City Hall.

At the meeting, Burleson community services director DeAnna Phillips presented proposed plans for deterring egrets in 2025 and beyond. 

An egret rookery, which can be a nuisance and cause property damage and health concerns with the amount of excrement the birds leave in the area, was established in the Shady Oaks area in 2024.

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BURLESON – The Burleson City Council discussed the city’s poorly-rated roadways and the projects the city’s updated Capital Improvement Program funds Monday at City Hall.

Burleson’s roadways scored a 69 on geology-data specialist Furgo’s 0-to-100 scale, according to assistant to the city manager Janalea Hembree’s Pavement Management Program presentation at the meeting.

14% of Burleson’s roadways are considered failed with 13% approaching failure, according to the presentation. 73% are in good or better condition.

Burleson’s concrete roads were assessed as an 83 while asphalt roads were at a 51, according to the presentation. 

The council will vote on what action to take in response to the Pavement Management Program results at a future meeting.

City staff’s recommendation to the council was to go with a scenario that’d increase the city’s operations and maintenance budget and result in Burleson’s roadways dropping to an overall 61.2 rating within 10 years to address failing roadways now while Burleson attempts to solidify further funding to see that rating increase in the future, Hembree said. 

“We keep getting complaints and even though we’re spending more money, we’re not going to be getting a better roadway until we vote and approve further funds,” Mayor Pro Tem Dan McClendon said at the meeting.

“We’re fighting roads that are failing while trying to fix roads that have already failed,” Council member Larry Scott said. “By the time we get those fixed, we’re gonna have that many more failed, if not more. We can’t afford to go up at this point—it’s too late for that. Trying to stay neutral would be a good goal.”

McClendon said he and deputy city manager Eric Oscarson “had a brief talk about why we can’t [increase the score] and why we’re stuck at the level we’re at.”

Burleson contracted Furgo in 2023 to assess its roadways. Furgo traveled approximately 567 lane miles of roadway within Burleson and collected detailed pictures and data about each roadway to assess their condition. 

The Pavement Management Program also allows the city to create a more detailed pavement life-cycle plan to extend the life of roads and allow them to be rated good or higher for a longer period, while decreasing the overall cost that would be spent on the roadway within its lifetime, according to Hembree’s presentation. 

With Burleson officially approving the fiscal-year 2024-2025 budget September 10, the city updated its Capital Improvement Program and the projects it will fund.

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Burleson’s property-tax rate is increasing for the first time since fiscal-year 2015-2016 to $.6627 in the 2024-2025 budget from $.6325 in the 2023-2024 budget.

This tax increase will raise over $4.38 million more than the 2023-2024 fiscal year. Approximately $1.25 million will come from new properties. 

Council member Alexa Boedeker asked deputy city manager Harlan Jefferson about wanting transparency on what the increased taxes pay for.

“Several city residents came to me and wanted to know why taxes are being raised and what they will be spent on,” Boedeker said at Monday’s meeting.

City manager Tommy Ludwig said there will be a large presentation outlining all potential changes and improvements to be bid on “at a future council meeting.”

The 2024-2025 budget includes a 2.25% growth of existing properties on their property tax revenue and a 3.69% increase on new properties.

The total assessed valuation of all properties within the City of Burleson for the 2023-2024 current fiscal year is around $6.7 billion, including certified and protested values but excluding any exemptions. 

The average Burleson home value, which is what the city bases its budget on, in Johnson County increased to $299,889 in fiscal-year 2023-2024 from $282,966 in 2022-23. Average Burleson homes in Tarrant County are around $286,000.

In the 2024-2025 budget, Burleson is focusing on having a high performing city organization, a dynamic and preferred city, a beautiful, safe and vibrant community and making Burleson a great place to live, Jefferson stated as he presented the budget to the council. 

Among the budget’s goals are making sure all the funds have a strong balance while being resilient and flexible to economic impacts, according to the presentation.

Burleson citizens’ top three concerns for the budget were streets and traffic control, police and fire, according to the results of 309 responses to the city’s survey posted on social media.

Council discusses county bond with Johnson County officials

Property taxes could continue to increase if Johnson County’s proposed bond passes in the November 5 election. Johnson County Commissioner Kenny Howell and other Johnson County officials discussed the bond with the council Monday.

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