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Counselor

The Oro Valley Town Council is not quite ready to call for a bond election that, if approved, would pay for development of the Naranja Town Site.

Instead, the council unanimously voted to continue the matter and directed the staff to come up with more options for the long-anticipated park development.

The action came less than two months after the council chose to recommend a leaner, less expensive version of the park. That meant an estimated cost of roughly $48 million rather than the full project's cost of nearly $151 million.

Last week, the council selected up to $80 million as the new target cost. Exactly what additional amenities will be included in the project are not yet clear.

"They've asked us to expand and look at some other options that were included in the community center," said Ainsley Reeder, the town's parks and recreation director.

The council asked staffers to explore how many site amenities could be added within the target cost. At the same time, the council expressed a desire to reduce the tax rate to 35 cents per $100 of assessed property value.

To pay for the park, the town must ask for voters' approval to issue bonds and levy a secondary property tax. The earliest a bond election could be held is November 2008.

Previously, it was estimated that if the town developed only the first phase of the park, at roughly $48 million, it would result in the levy of a secondary property tax of up to 48 cents per $100 of assessed property value, according to Stacey Lemos, town finance director.

Councilman Terry Parish, who made the latest motion, said the town has until June to call for a bond election.

Parish said he and others are concerned about missing amenities from the proposal recommended in early November.

Parish had urged his colleagues unsuccessfully to allow town residents to vote on the entire project, saying that doing so would serve the whole community instead of just some segments.

His latest push to incorporate more amenities into the site is an effort to make it available to more users, he said.

"We want to build things that people in the community would use, regardless of age," Parish said.

"My specific goal is for us to be able to come up with something we haven't been presented with so far."

The phase the council had focused on in early November includes sports fields, picnic ramadas, tennis courts, a dog park and other amenities at the 213-acre site on West Naranja Drive near North La Cañada Drive. At the time, a band shell was excluded from the package.

That decision disappointed Al Cook, vice president of the Greater Oro Valley Arts Council board of directors.

The Town Council's most recent decision gives him renewed hope that the arts will be better represented in the project, he said.

"Going to $80 million brings into the project more of the elements that were in the original project," he said.

The original plan, which was based on residents' input, also includes a skateboard park, a music pavilion, an aquatics center and a community center.

Operating and maintaining the park's first phase is estimated at $1.2 million. Two-thirds of the town's 6 percent bed tax — a tax on temporary lodgings — would pay for it.