Flower Mound Weighs a May Bond for a New Police Headquarters and Arts Center

No election has been called. This story is about options the Town Council is still weighing.

The Flower Mound Police Department works out of a building that was once a Food Lion grocery store. Town leaders agree it needs a new headquarters. They have not decided how to pay for one, or whether to ask voters.

The Cross Timbers Gazette reported Oct. 26 that the council discussed a possible May 2027 bond election at a Monday meeting. It would cover a new police headquarters, a proposed Arts Center at the River Walk, or both. To make the May ballot, the council would have to call the election by the end of January 2027.

A police station built for groceries

According to the town's project page, the police department has spent more than 25 years in the converted store at 4150 Kirkpatrick Lane. Over that time, its staff has grown from 83 sworn and civilian employees to 145. The town has renovated or added on to the building five times, but the department has still outgrown it.

The 4.8-acre site has a 45,600-square-foot building, which the department shares with the Municipal Court. The town lists these problems:

• The two share 232 parking spaces, and officers often park in public areas. The town says it needs more than double that.

• Evidence rooms are too small and poorly ventilated for safely handling narcotics. There is no room for a digital forensics lab.

• Some employees have no locker space.

• The sallyport, the secure garage for bringing in detainees, holds only one vehicle at a time.

• The holding area has room for 16 detainees, but the town says it needs room for 18 to 20.

"We've been in there going on 30 years now... a lot of the challenges we're facing there are mostly functional since it was built as a grocery store," Town Manager James Childers said, according to the Gazette. "We've made great use of that space, but as we continue to grow, we're running into more issues."

The town has bought 19.688 acres at 2311 Aberdeen Drive, which has access from FM 2499, for a new police station, municipal court and fire station. The town says the site will not connect to any residential streets.

Fire Station No. 3 is set to move there first. The town's page says design was to start in spring 2026 and construction could begin in 2027. That station is estimated at about $12 million and will be paid for with certificates of obligation, a type of debt that generally does not go to a bond election.

A September 2019 sunset at the Flower Mound, the prairie hill that gives the town its name. Photo: Shiva Shenoy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

The price and the tax rate

Childers told the council the police headquarters could cost around $100 million and raise the town's tax rate by four cents, according to the Gazette. The exact cost and what the building would include have not been decided.

The proposed Arts Center is estimated at $75 million. Childers said the town expects to build it without raising the tax rate, using money from the River Walk Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, which Denton County also pays into. Running the center is a separate problem.

"Once you move forward with the Arts Center, that operational cost comes into play and you have to start hiring people," Childers said. "That takes away our razor-thin margins. If we were to move forward using [debt], we would either be making substantial cuts or looking at a VATRE election in November 2027." A VATRE is a voter-approval tax rate election.

Mayor Pro Tem Adam Schiestel said he supports the Arts Center but is worried about what comes after. "If we can do all this and not affect the tax rate, we can move forward," he said. "But if we move forward, the tax rate goes up and voters never have a chance to weigh in."

Together, the two projects add up to roughly $175 million. That is our math, based on the two estimates Childers gave.

Staff is expected to bring firmer prices and options to the council on Nov. 19, and the council is expected to decide how to proceed then.

Our view

Police officers should not be processing narcotics evidence in cramped rooms of an old grocery store. A town of Flower Mound's size needs a proper station, and the site is already bought.

The Arts Center is a want, not a need, and Schiestel is right about the risk. A building that costs no new tax to build can still need a tax increase to run. If the town takes on either project, it should put the question to voters and show them the operating costs.

Other cities are already putting public safety projects before voters. See North Richland Hills, which is asking voters about fire stations, and Midlothian, where the ballot language and the city's tax promise don't match.