Capstone studies Navasota CIPs, public opinion

The results of a Texas A&M Bush School Capstone Project examining Navasota’s Capital Improvement Projects (CIPs) were presented to city council and the public at the May 10 council meeting. Present were graduate students Alicia Ortman, Jim Engelke, Crayton Brubaker, Lindsey Gonzalez, Julia Koerner and Professor Justin Bullock, PhD who attended via Zoom.

Over the course of the yearlong project, the students evaluated the quality of Navasota’s CIPs, the funding sources and conducted interviews with elected officials, organizational stakeholders, and active citizens, and analyzed community surveys from 168 respondents. Each student presented segments of the 46-page Comprehensive Report to council.

What’s been done?

According to study results, since 2006 of the nearly $14 million in projects completed or started, over $5.9 million was funded by grants, saving taxpayers almost 42%. Over $1.06 million in rehabilitation and repairs have been performed on 118,313 square yards of roads, streets, and bridges – this is in addition to work performed by Grimes County or TxDOT.

As for water and gas projects, $6 million has been spent on improvements and expansion of the water and wastewater system including the main lines, treatment facilities and monitoring system, with $300,000 to improve or expand gas delivery system and meter replacement.

Drainage work has improved water flow in downtown and other flood prone areas, and the sidewalks and parking lots which are part of the downtown beautification and revitalization, have contributed to a 112% boost in sales tax revenue.

The report concluded that Navasota’s projects have been in line with citizen demands, with road and street repair and drainage being the leading category of spending.

Equity, knowledge gap

A takeaway of positives and negatives gleaned from the surveys is that 44% feel that all residents of the community are positively impacted by the CIPs, but roughly one-third do not.

Koerner said, “Looking at the data, we came to the conclusion that is a perception of equity and that a majority of respondents do not feel the City is equitable in its distribution of funding for projects or development of projects.”

She continued, “They feel most of the attention is going to the downtown area for things like revitalization or fixing roads, and other areas of the city are not being given as much attention.”

However, the survey revealed a knowledge gap in what citizens knew about the CIPs as well as the cost.

The report stated, “The survey results above indicate that residents fall into the extremes in terms of when they learned about projects. They either have never known the projects happened or they have known about them since the beginning of the process.”

Navasota works

A product of the Capstone Project is a magazine and trifold brochure entitled “Navasota Works.” They provide citizens with information about CIP history, CIP funding, a CIP project map as well as some Navasota demographics. Both are available at City Hall free of charge.