‘State of the City’ luncheon provides outlook on economy, roadways

(ROCKWALL, TX – Feb. 21, 2017) The Rockwall Area Chamber of Commerce welcomed a “State of the City” presentation by Mayor Jim Pruitt, City Manager Rick Crowley and EDC President/CEO Sheri Franza during its monthly partnership luncheon on Wednesday, Feb. 15.

Pruitt said the steady growth Rockwall has seen in the past decade has led to tremendous increases in the tax base for the city. In the past 10 years, Rockwall has seen a population increase of 37 percent, from 30,761 in the FY 2006-2007 to 42,270 in FY 2016-2017. During that time, the city has seen an increase of 76 percent in total assessed value of the tax base from $2.9 billion to $5.1 billion, and a 116 percent increase in the non-residential tax base from $736 million to $1.59 billion.

“The big number is this non-residential tax base. We’ve been able to attract certain businesses to Rockwall, and that takes the tax burden off the homeowners and puts it on the businesses as we continue to bring them in,” Pruitt said.

Sales tax has also played a major factor in keeping the tax rate low within the city, according to Pruitt. The city, Pruitt said, was able to decrease the tax rate by 3.1 cents this year due to an 87 percent increase in sales tax collected.

“This is a great time to be in Rockwall. We’re able to lower some of those things and the reason being is because while some property values went up, we managed to adopt the effective rate so that that didn’t hurt a lot of people. We were able to lower the tax rate because of those increases in sales tax.”

According to Crowley’s presentation, Rockwall ranks 50th in sales tax dollars among all Texas cities.

“I think this means we’re going to have to continue the conservative approach in our budgeting with our sales tax and other numbers so that we stay in the financial position we’re in,” Crowley said. “One of the strategic goals of the council is to maintain this high per capita sales tax collections that we currently enjoy, and also to maintain the split between residential and commercial. We can do that by bringing new shopping and dining opportunities, and developing those we already have to be more successful. That’s what our focus is going to be in terms of working towards achieving those strategic goals set by the council.”

Rockwall EDC President/CEO Sheri Franza agreed that maintaining steady growth for the city means keeping a healthy balance between the residential and commercial tax base – 67 percent residential, 33 percent commercial.

“We believe that this gives us a good balance. It allows Rockwall to stay the great city that we all want to live in, and want to continue to see growth in,” Franza said.

The Rockwall Technology Park continues to bring new, thriving industry into Rockwall. The EDC’s latest projects for the park include bringing in the fifth largest corrugated box company in the world to Rockwall. The project – codenamed JLL30 – currently has 400,000 square feet under construction and is looking to hire for 140 full time jobs. The facility is expected to open in June of this year. Other projects include Pegasus Foods, which will bring a 135,000 square-foot facility and 150 jobs, and Lollicup USA – a California-based worldwide consumer product manufacturing and distribution center which makes disposable ware for food processing facilities and restaurants. Lollicup will construct a 600,000 square-foot facility and is expected to bring in 200 jobs.

By the end of the year, Franza said they will have close to one million square feet of industry under construction in the Rockwall Technology Park. The College and Career Academy set to be completed next year will hopefully provide a trained, talented workforce for the incoming businesses coming into Rockwall, Franza said.

In order to continue bringing industry that supports the lifestyles of those living and working within the community, Franza said it’s important for the EDC, the city and the business community to work together to attract the next generation of the workforce into Rockwall. “It’s incumbent upon us to build the kind of city that is going to attract the kind of people who are going to live here and be our workforce, so we can attract the industry to support our lifestyle.”

As Rockwall continues to grow, it faces another big challenge in the form of roadways and traffic. The Rockwall County Road Consortium currently has 14 road projects underway, each at various stages of planning, design, construction and completion. Among the completed projects are the Erby Campbell / I-30 Interchange, FM 551 / I-30 Interchange, the Rockwall County Thoroughfare Plan Update and the I-30 Ramp Reversal.

“We are very proud of the road projects that we’ve had in the City of Rockwall,” Pruitt said. “It looks like every road in Rockwall is torn up right now – and it is – but that’s because there’s so much growth coming to Rockwall that we’ve done our partnering with the county to come up with some of these projects. The ramp reversals at John King and I-30 – that was the number one project that this council had to get done. That is completed now and hopefully it will relieve the traffic at 205.

“The second project had to do with 205 – what’s going to happen with 205 through Rockwall? I will tell you that more than likely there will be an announcement before too long that they’ve adopted the John King route to get the traffic around the City of Rockwall.”

“Every roadway project you see in Rockwall occurring on a state highway is going to include federal money, state money, county money and in some form or fashion, city money,” Crowley said. “That is a tremendous partnership that allows us to leverage more state funds than any community or county that I know of in the state.”

For monthly updates on roadway projects in the City of Rockwall visit rockwallcountytexas.com/279/Road-Consortium.

To view the complete PowerPoint presentations provided at the luncheon, visit rockwall.com.

Story and photo by Austin Wells, Blue Ribbon News.