The Woodlands Township board of directors on Jan. 23 worked its way through a report from The Novak Consulting Group, the firm it has retained to assist with its incorporation-planning studies, to determine what it wanted to include in its final financial model for incorporation. Among the items the model will include are $14.7 million in annual costs for a partial in-house police department. The firm provided the board with a 360-page report analyzing various revenue sources available to the township and costs it could incur if it is incorporated into a city in a future vote. The report asked the board to determine which scenarios for each of 15 initiatives they want to keep in the financial model that will be presented at a future meeting. Initiatives discussed included a property tax freeze for senior citizens as well as costs for law enforcement, public works and other services that would be needed as an incorporated city. On the question of property tax, board members elected to stay with a conservative baseline budget estimate based on a projected 1 percent annual property tax growth rather than the 2 percent growth projected by the analysts. The board declined to make a choice on whether it would include a contract for public works operations in the model at this time, but on the law-enforcement question the board members agreed to choose what was termed a hybrid for the purposes of a financial model. If adopted, this would mean the future city would continue to contract with Montgomery County for some law-enforcement services, but it would bring in-house those services currently contracted to Harris County—like policing the Creekside Park community. The cost for this hybrid option would be $14.7 million per year with another $1.6 million one-time capital cost, according to Novak. “The only way we can have continuity of forces is to have our own police force,” township Chairman Gordy Bunch said. Director Bruce Rieser said the hybrid model makes the most sense because a town marshal—for example, a police chief—would be needed to enforce city ordinances, so some sort of in-house police department would be needed. Novak representatives said they would take the information from the meeting to create a final financial model. After the presentation, Bunch addressed public questions about the possible date of a vote on incorporation, saying the board has no date in mind for the public vote until the studies are complete. “Until we have the completed data, there’s no one trying to come up with an artificial completion date,” he said. Novak also revealed a look at a new webpage for community engagement on incorporation, www.thewoodlandsincorporationstudy.com. In addition to infographics and schedules, the site includes presentations and reports prepared as part of the incorporation study. The website was expected to launch after the meeting or the following morning. The board also agreed to move the dates of its next incorporation-planning meetings from Feb. 21 and March 21 to 6 p.m. Feb. 27 and March 27.