Evans sets stage for 2025 with possible mill increase, new police station

EVANS — After a year of working to rebuild and beautify, the city of Evans plans more of the same in 2025, according to Mayor Mark Clark in a state of the city address he delivered Friday.

In the address, Clark highlighted several projects from 2024, including rebuilding 37th Street, also known as Freedom Parkway, as well as rehabbing and designing several city parks, and setting the stage to refurbish the entrance into the city on U.S. Highway 85 with new signage, and redeveloping a former commercial park that was razed years ago now called Evans Junction.

One caveat to city beautification is paying for it, and the city will mull the idea of asking voters for a mill levy increase next year. The mill levy has been at 3.536 mills for 12 years.

Evans city manager Cody Sims said a mill levy increase will be critical, especially at a time when the city’s main tax revenue is from retail sales tax. Sims said if you take the median housing valuation in Evans of $372,000, residents pay only $88.13 a year into the city, which is less than 4% of residents’ entire property tax burden.

“When so much of your budget is funded by sales tax, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that any bump in the economy could result in near immediate disruptions in service delivery,” Sims said.

He plans to start with polling city residents this next year to determine if a mill levy increase will be possible for the 2025 ballot.

One light in the tunnel is that the city has been overpaying its reserve fund, essentially paying 50% — double what it is required to save — of its general fund into its reserve for the last several years. But in 2025, city leaders plan to taper off those contributions slowly back down to 32%, which will help fuel general coffers by $6.1 million. City leaders plan to use that money in several ways, including creating a welcome sign at 31st Street and U.S. Highway 85 and funding public improvements at the Evans Junction commercial development.

“We will purchase new vehicles and equipment to improve our municipal operations, invest in our public facilities, and continue our investment in public infrastructure, including a study to municipalize our streetlights city-wide. With evolving threats to cybersecurity, we will continue to invest in network security improvements to ensure our data, networks, and sensitive information remain secure,” Clark said in his address.

While the city concentrates on beautification, it has created its own sign shop to replace city street signs and bring them up to code.

But it also will soon build a new police station to better accommodate its department that moved there 25 years ago when city hall relocated to its current location from what is now Riverside Library and Cultural Center. The city just purchased a 5-acre plot south of City Hall on which to build the new station.

Evans Police Chief Rick Brandt said the department is working in offices built for approximately 15 officers, but which now houses 46 people, including detectives who must work in the basement.

“We’re just completely busting at the seams,” Brandt said. “There’s no place to park police cars and no holding facilities. We just don’t have the amenities of a modern police station.”

City leaders want to ensure it will handle a growing population in the next 25 years. That will likely mean bonding for about $30 million to $35 million for a station of about 33,000 to 35,000 square feet.

“That’s everything from the land to carpeting,” Brandt said. “It could move once we start putting shovel to the dirt. We’re going to design it with the expectation …. of what we expect police staffing will look like in 25 years.  We need to be good stewards of taxpayers’ money.”

Brandt said if all goes well, they could break ground in the next year.

The city also will be getting new retail in its Evans Junction project. Sims said he will bring a national retail project to the City Council at its Nov. 4 meeting. A Texas developer also has expressed interest in two other lots in that area, Sims said.

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