Comprehensive Plan Oversight Committee - Regular Meeting

I called the meeting to order at 05:40. Can we call roll?

Yes, sir. Sarah Simpson is absent. Cody Landonby?

Here.

Robert Eby?

Here.

Gabrielle Moore? Here. Rosemary Ray is

absent. Cody D'Salvo is absent. These fruits here. We have a quorum. This

is the city of San Marcos regular meeting agenda for the comprehensive plan oversight committee on Thursday, 07/24/2025 at 05:30PM. We're meeting at, Building 3 at 630 East Hopkins. Currently, we are at the citizen comment period. Each speaker will be provided up to three minutes to speak. Persons wishing to participate during the citizen comment portion of the meeting virtually must email planninginfo@sanmarcustx.gov prior to 12PM on the day of the meeting.

A call in number link will be provided for participation. Written comments can also be submitted to planninginfo@ssmarcustx.gov for distribution of the board prior to the meeting. Those wishing to speak in person may sign up in person on the day of the meeting. Each speaker signed up prior to the meeting being called up to order will be called in the order in which they're signed up. Do we have any EU citizens?

No. We do not. First

item on the agenda, consider approval by motion, the regular meeting minutes for the comprehensive plan oversight committee from 05/24/2025. Everyone has a packet. Lisa, did you get a there's Oh my god. Packets on that. I just

give me the. Mhmm. That's a. This is too.

We'll spend about three minutes reviewing the meeting minutes. If there are corrections, this is the time to make them.

So Gaby after Gaby after she probably came in at

05:59. You're on time at six.

You have your screen share. The video won't show the, yeah, the best screen sharing. I move to approve the minutes. Last meeting. Second.

I guess we need to vote. So all in favor of approving the minutes as written We'll call vote. Oh, we'll call votes.

Mhmm. And

there's no discussion on the minutes?

Are there any discussion on changes? No.

Callable. K. Cody Lantamy?

Yes.

Robert Eby?

Yes.

Gabrielle Moore? Yes. Lisa Kerr? Yes. Motion passes. Four

lane Zero two thousand. Okay.

Item number two, receive a staff presentation, hold a discussion on the comprehensive plan implementation, and provide feedback to staff. Alright.

Alrighty. Well, thanks for being here. This is our it was a little process timeline for y'all. We have this in your packet as well, but this is actually an extra meeting that we're holding to specifically discuss the priorities kind of one extra time before October. I wanted to just give a quick breakdown.

I presented a version of this at our last meeting, but I wanted to give you all an idea of this sort of our our time frame moving forward. So we are actually right here in the middle of our process. We met in May. We had our first meeting. You all reviewed the full massive list of a 100 plus different priorities, and you sort of sort of develop those preliminary ones. What

I

have done since we last met is I met with all of the different staff that was responsible for the priorities that you guys indicated. So I think you had the check boxes, and you had one, two, three, or four. So, specifically, I looked at any of the priority action items that you had had a three or four as. So those kind of rose to the top. So I talked to the different departments about those.

You just get their feedback. Let them know that this is what this committee is thinking. The other thing that we've done is we have created a massive implementation spreadsheet. So that's kind of the the bones and framework for looking at all of the different priorities within the comp plan over time. Prepared that conference plan packet, and here we are. So our purpose is really to get feedback on some of those preliminary priorities. There's no action occurring. This is just discussion. Wanted to make sure that you guys felt comfortable with kind of what you selected or see if there are other things that that need to be selected. So we're right here.

I'll talk about the rest of this kind of at the end of the presentation, but we're moving into our third meeting, which will be able to actually vote on the final priorities that you'd like to pitch to counsel. That does not mean that everything else in the comp plan gets dropped off the list because we are working on basically reporting out every single line item in the comp plan and whether we've made progress or not and what that progress was. So I wanted to just give you a snippet of our implementation worksheet. So what we've sort of done to kind of think of the best way to use this over the next twenty years is we developed a a worksheet that had, on the left column, those indicate kind of the inputs that we're looking at. So we've identified for every line item in the comp plan who the lead department would be, so who is actually responsible for leading implementation of each action.

Sometimes there's multiple departments or there might be co leads as well. We've indicated a progress status. So you and the community council, everyone will be able to see how we initiated the action. Is it in progress or ongoing, or is it complete? So there's three inputs there. So we can able to also see what has not been initiated and why it hasn't been initiated. The big kind of meat of it is the updates and comments. So this is an area for staff to provide you and the community sort of an a status update related to each action item. That would be kind of the things we discussed at the last meeting. Is this a regulation that I need to input into the development code?

Is this an incentive being worked on? Is it a program, a plan, a policy? Basically, what is being done related to the action? So there's a narrative that each department is creating. The other big thing we talked about is performance metrics.

So how are we able to track progress on the action? So are we for example, if the action item is we wanna have more accessory dwelling units in San Marcos, we know that the performance metric is gonna be based around having a an outcome that says we would like to add, you know, x number of accessory dwelling units this year, or it could be that we wanna create an education manual to help the community better understand how to build an accessory to one of it. So we'll indicate whether we've actually specifically found what we want the metric to be. All that to say, there might be situations where we're not sure. So I think tree canopy is a really good example.

So tree canopy is one of the things in the comp plan to increase the tree canopy. The performance metric for that would be, you know, we want to potentially have 15% more tree canopy over x amount of time, could be an example. That might be something that we don't quite know how to track yet. Well, we might we would like to do that. We'd love to get to 15%. What are the things we need as, you know, resources or technology to get us to be able to actually track them? So that's what this next one is, metric status. So this will tell you whether or not we're we are actively tracking. So for the accessory dwelling unit example, we can track that immediately. We have software.

That's our permit data. I can tell you exactly how many ADUs we have, how many have been permitted, how many are in progress. But the tree stuff, for example, that might be something that we're actually exploring. So we might we're we're trying to figure out what's the best way to track this metric over time. And then there there are gonna be a lot of instances where we're not tracking it, where we know that we would like to be able to have this outcome, but we we aren't quite sure yet.

You know, we haven't put the resources to figure out what technology or what system or process we need to put into place to track it. So the next big thing that we'll tell you is whether or not the action item is in the strategic plan. So the strategic plan we talked about last meeting is the plan that city council creates every January, and it's their it's kinda like their mini comp plan for the year. It's their work plan. And so we'll let you know whether or not that action item is already in the strategic plan. In a way, that means that there's already really great council support behind it because they put it into their plan. So we'll let you know if that's if that's in there or not. So folks in the community can also go back and kind of track that over time because that that report does change each year.

How often do y'all update that? Like, weekly, monthly? Because that's a lot.

Mhmm. This worksheet or strategic plan? Your like, your the whatever document it

would be that the community could go look on to see, like, with that. Because that's not created yet. Correct?

It is created, and the departments right now are all in it Okay. Editing it. So I suspect what we'll end up doing is having an annual they'll be updating it annually. Okay. But I will say the strategic plan so let's say the recommendation about accessory joint units is in the strategic plan. We do quarterly updates on the strategic plan. So each department has to go in and, you know, it's almost like it's extra prioritized. Right? So then we're doing more regular updates. That makes sense.

One second. Hi,

Cody. Welcome.

Hi. Sorry for being late. Austin traffic is terrible under normal circumstances and extra terrible today.

No worries. We have you down at arriving at 05:53. Okay. So this next bit on this slide let

me get this window.

These are the six priorities top priorities that you all discussed and and outlined at your last meeting. You had a lot of one check mark or a lot of two check mark, but, actually, you only have six that I think everyone kinda came around and and sort of elevated to the top. So I'm gonna walk through each of these individually, and the goal is really just to show you what I discussed with the different departments. So I've kinda put that in front of them and said, hey. This is what they're thinking.

I want to make sure that we as staff feel like it's something that we can accomplish, you know, kind of what their thoughts are on it. So I'll walk through each one. So the first priority, the one that received four check marks, so this was actually your top one, was you wanted to really prioritize evaluating the need for a city staff position to manage transportation demand management programs to encourage active transportation, transit, and services such as rideshare and park and ride system. So this particular action is around a staff position. So the lead department is public works.

The project progress status is it's not initiated. The reason it's not initiated is because it is not something that was budgeted in the fiscal year twenty six budget. And that's kind of going through its own iterations. It's not, you know, adopted or approved, but it wasn't a discussion this year. I will say the recommendation is evaluate.

Right? So it could still be something that you want to be done in this next year that you want staff to more specifically really see, well, what what would it take to have a new Citi stock position? Or maybe, you know, just elevate your your priority that that that's still something that you want to really be done. So just because it's not something that we have the budget in doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have to elevate it, but I at least wanted to bring it to your attention that it's if you do put it into the the the year report and city council does, you know, to consider it, they it might not be something that's funded, but it could be funded in fiscal year '27. Question for that. Mhmm. So

just knowing that there's always so many needs for city staff, like, huge. Would it be better to maybe restate this need and maybe instead of saying evaluate the need for city staff, maybe just evaluating the action, managing transportation demand, and seeing what the capacity would be within the transportation department we have now or interns or something like that instead of

doing the city staff piece of it? Absolutely. Because it

sounds like I'm then they're done at. That might stay down the bottom of list because that would be really hard to get Mhmm.

Yeah. Four votes on Yeah.

In any given year, I'm assuming.

Also, yeah, are we we're discussing this one? Discussion. Mhmm.

We could also partner with a community based advocacy group. I'm thinking like movability or a public private partnership. Or maybe we we work we we see within city staff if there's grants and things like that that would help maybe need some funding and intern for twelve months. I don't know. There's something, but maybe remove the city staff and you guys could maybe help re

it seems like there's but that need. Yeah.

We don't need to reinvent the wheel. You know? Just have trained an intern when there's, like, these orgs that are already wanting to do these Yeah. Kinds of tasks. Okay. Well,

Sarah too bad Sarah's not here because she's on the move s San Mark move San Marcus. Oh, I am too. Or oh, York. Yeah.

So I mean, we can certainly advise, but

You can't

do it.

Have the do you have the capacity, though, to manage transport demand programs? I mean, that's the thing is that that's what I mean. Like, that's something that would literally need to be Funded. Yeah. Yeah. But but working with

the city, you could might be able

to find grant money to help fund things, specific programs. Mhmm.

Is this something that we could partner with the university and their extensive transit system that they're operating? I know that's a sticky relationship sometimes maybe. Or, you know, the

Do you know the thing

process is the process

is complicated with that, I should say.

It actually sounds like y'all are already doing the evaluating right now. Right. Which means that this is probably a thumbs up to changing the language. This is straight from the comp plan. Right?

Mhmm.

So we can't change what it says. But I like the ideas of we're going to evaluate a need for city staff, but maybe we don't find the need because we find other methods. So so what y'all are doing right now is actually that next step of this task.

Yeah. Can I

ask you a question just for because I don't even know this right now? So when I was on council, we did become the direct recipients of our transportation money Mhmm. Parts. Is that still the case? We never sold out to university on that. Anybody know that? Do you know that? We're still directors at the end. We still so that was a bit contentious when we did that. Don't know do you know anything about that? No. Explain the background. So the the money that CARTs operates, which is our city bus and the university are totally separate. Right? And so we get our money from federal and state money.

And CARTs used to be the direct recipients of the city of San Marcos. And when I was on CARTs, we made San Marcos a direct recipient so we would have more flexibility with that money and how to spend it. And then we wanted a partnership with the university. They were very interested in becoming the recipients of that money so they could actually control the entire system in San Marcos. And we said, no. We really want to because one day we might be bigger than you. And we don't wanna give that up at this point in time. So I don't know where that's going right now or what advances we've made, but that would probably be really a good thing to understand where that is. So when you say partner, well, how is that relationship right now too? Is this if it's a really healthy relationship, it might be a great idea.

If it's not a super healthy relationship, maybe we try to make it healthier.

Well, it's

all in the contract.

It's all in contract. It's Even though it is, it's been so many years since I've been exposed to it.

Meaning that it would

be negotiated like, it would have to be negotiated within a contract. I'm not talking about the existing contract. I have no idea what it is. Yeah.

I I know that the university and I don't think it was like this when I was in school, but you can now just walk up and get

on the university bus without checking student IDs or

anything like that. Mhmm. Yeah. So that seems like

a step in the right

direction for where

student can on parks also. Yes. I mean, can

anybody ride for free on

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

Yeah. Mhmm. So it seem seems like that's you know, if you're not fighting for fairs and it's more

So so as Amanda said, I think we're trying to solve the problem instead of discuss the action that we need to take on this issue. So let's step out of the weeds. We we have to figure out, I think, how we want to Approach. Present approach this priority. I think we're interested in Keeping pursuing this. We just have to figure out how we present it to city council.

So on the performance metric, kind of what you were saying Mhmm. Is the way I looked so public works kinda took a perspective of, well, I don't have the ability to do the new staff position. But you're correct. It says evaluate. So to me, my initial performance metrics to show whether we're moving the needle is the first thing is you need to evaluate the transportation demand programs, right, to know is there a need for the new staff position?

Like, what what are the programs doing? And is there is it is it proposed to be expanded? Do we feel like there is a hole, that there is a lot more work to do it if the comp plan is in the transit plan too, there's a transit plan in the works, if that's pushing the needle on transportation demand programs, then that could be an opportunity. So I do still think the first thing you have to do is evaluate the programs and then evaluate your staffing levels, and then you make a decision on if you need a new staff or, you know, and how you're gonna fund it. So I think it's still relevant.

I think the other things that are moving that could help continue to make it relevant are transit plan and then transportation master plan update is kicking off. You know, we we're working to get those contracts signed. So it's going to be something that could be evaluated through a transportation master planning process.

Good to you. Yeah.

I like that. So I will also state on the strategic plan level, there was a group that Doctor. Ray led called the San Marcos Transportation Equity Cabinet, And they talked about equity issues in transportation in San Marcos. They have a report online. You can go and read it. But the city council actually has a line item in their 2025 strategic plan that said implement the recommendations from that equity cabinet, and that equity cabinet had a recommendation that pretty much was this. Mhmm. So in a way, council kind of knew that was in there, and so there might be a movement on the council side too.

Is there a comprehensive plan action item regarding the transportation master plan?

Yes. I believe there is.

The transportation master plan might encompass this action item. Mhmm. It might include evaluating for staff positions needed.

Yes. Thinking like that.

So if we take a bigger picture look, not not get into, well, we want a new staff position, but let's get a let's revise that transportation master plan that might dictate, are we gonna combine bus systems? Are we gonna add more bike lanes? Are we gonna need staff to manage all those

different things? Master plan is gonna be the thing that says.

Right. When was our last transportation master plan adopted? 2018. And in fact, it's the very first line

item. So,

you know, everything should fall under the umbrella. Everything here should be here. So it could go about that direction too.

Yeah. And our recommendation to city council, does it just have to say, we're prioritizing TR 1.1? Because and that's and that's it. Or can we go further and explain why we're recommending that action item? Because we want to see if because we think there's several issues with the current transportation in the city, and we want to see if we need more staff members to manage those issues to bring them online.

Maybe Do we need to to manage the update prop do we have enough staff to manage the update, Or do do we just get to say we support this action item?

Yeah. You know, the process well, this is the first time, so we can make it,

you know,

what we want. Statement with it is nice because it it it shows we thought this through, we've processed some things, and maybe we go into the positive. Like, we we see that there's such great potential for our community's health and livability, walkability to incorporate this. I don't know. Something's short

and sweet. This action because

Mhmm. Yeah. I think I like that. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So that

At our next meeting, when we kind of take the vote, that can be part of the discussion is we can frame it to where you have your six, and then together, we can write what are those, like, you know, the top three or so, like, pieces of their reasoning. And then that can be in the I believe we do a recommendation resolution that

would

show your your priorities. So that would be formalized into a document. So we can we I can set that framework up for next time.

So I think there was, if I recall, a lot of favoritism toward transportation. Maybe we focused on the wrong action item to put our check marks on. Well, we have four check marks. It does. But But maybe maybe Move. Pivoting from one to another isn't excluding it. It's including it. Saying we wanna work on the mass transportation master plan would encompass several other items fully. Right?

And I will say I didn't put a cap on the number of priorities you can have. I think I gave you a range, but, you know, you could always say you could always add the full transportation master plan in it, and then you'd have seven. I think trying to keep it around five is my goal just because it's a lot.

Yeah. But Sure.

So there's no issue with that if you wanna do that the next meeting too, and I'll put that in our notes. Okay. We're done

with this

one. So this next action is from the economic development section, and it's protect and promote land uses that support target industries, support diversification of the city's tax base, and enhance economic development by using tools such as intentional infrastructure planning, recruitment, and the land use entitlement process. So lead department here is economic development, but I will say planning is part of some of this with the land use entitlement. And then intentional infrastructure planning, that's a bit, you know, bit of of multiple departments. That's just the development process, which touches me.

We do feel like this is something that we're already working on, and our economic development division kind of gave us a framework that they're they're moving a lot of things in this area. So first thing is they're wanting to update the economic development policy, which is something that's adopted by city council to actually specifically add language for what we wanna be doing. So first, they wanna leverage incentives to attract and retain high quality employers and jobs. We'll say that existing policy is a bit out of date, and so we're just trying to also respond to essentially the kind of budgetary conditions that we're into and just each year, there are just new reasons to be looking at that policy. They also wanna explore economic economic development programs that help make San Marcos competitive to top employers and desirable industries.

So that's just how do we stay competitive? How do we get folks to open in San Marcos, not in surrounding cities in the corridor? In general, collaborating with everyone, like I mentioned, it's not this this particular action is sort of everybody. I think that's a bit of guiding the development process too. So what does that look like for folks who are wanting to to come in to San Marcos? What is their land use entitlement process? How are they getting their infrastructure infrastructure planning? How are we recruiting them? Are we recruiting them? And then having them locate in the right locations, I think, is part of a broader conversation.

And then also working with our finance department. So that's sort of the other layer. So we wanna start to track all those private investments that are, you know, happening in Saint Marcus. What are the fiscal impacts of those investments to the city and our fiscal health as well? That kind of gets into the tool that you all were talking about.

I think this one, again, is one of those umbrellas that can fit lots of things underneath it. For performance metrics, some of the things we thought of are, first, we want to adopt the policy revisions. That's really the first spot to start is we wanna make sure that counsel is buying in and and understands the direction we wanna go with economic development policy in San Marcos. We have the comp plan that tells us that, but the economic development policy will actually give kind of a more, you know, specific framework. And then this is something that the division also wanted to take a look at is start to measure kind of the private capital investment, the jobs, the wages, and how those all work together.

So I think that's kind of exciting because I'm not sure we have a a great measurement tool for that just yet. They indicated that they were already exploring, so they're already, you know, starting to talk about the timeline for updating that policy and then are exploring ways to kind of track some of this a little bit better. And I will say that this is you guys are kind of right on track. This is also in the 2025 strategic plan, so there is some movement already from council on kind of this topic. I think this one had three checks. So

Would it be too far in the weeds right now if I asked whether there were portions of that policy that are looking at small business and local businesses and retention of those as well. Just

Mhmm.

You know, would would be great to attract talent, but would also be great to retain talent within this. I don't know if those policy revisions aren't mentioning that or not. And if if I'm getting too granular thinking about it right now

Mhmm. I think that's a great point, honestly. Yeah.

I think that could be kind of that beefing up of, like, why this one could sort of influence some of that. So that also gives counsel on economic development vision division kind of some guidance on what is important to y'all.

K. Or or, like, when

when they get the small businesses, how do we market them? I don't know. Like, I mean, so that people won't keep going in ground floor. Mhmm. Yeah. So

I share a little bit more. Yeah.

And instead of looking at this as how do we bring in this big company from wherever, it's also doing that while supporting who the people that are here.

How do we keep Daughter of the Wild in business?

Well, that's why think that we I wonder if we found out if we wanna include this, like, when we make a statement, but just reminding ourselves and reminding people from the policies too that the small businesses, the money stays within the community. These the huge corporations, there might be more jobs, but the money doesn't necessarily stay within the community. Usually, it's us.

Yeah. Give give me a balance.

Exactly. Just give

me a balance in the

as they discuss this.

Yep.

Alright.

Next one. Update, review, and adopt a housing action plan. So lead department is us. We are in progress on this now. So we're we're working on that in our 2025 work plan. This update primarily is going to reflect new data available. So just for some context, we worked on a housing action plan. My goodness. How many years ago was it? 2018. '18. 2018 was the housing needs assessment. 2019 was when I think we had the plan, the draft plan, and it it has not reached adoption. So we still have the plan, but a lot of the data is old. Right?

So what we wanna do is update some of the data to the best of our ability. One of the sort of difficult things about updating it is we did have a a consultant who did a expansive survey on housing needs assessment. Typically, it's very expansive. It's a lot of data. It was done by a consultant group called group policy. And so we don't have any budget necessarily to go and do that level of data again. So we're trying to see what it is that we can do in house to update that data. But I will say in looking at it, a lot of the recommendations are still very relevant to San Marcos. So it's kind of the first piece. And then we also wanna get some public feedback on it.

So we don't wanna just update the data and then take it straight to city council. We wanna make sure that the community still needs to see that plan and and understand maybe what has changed in it. Our performance metric for that is overall adoption of the plan is, I think, the only way to really achieve that action right there, especially because we're already reviewing it currently and are are working on updates. We are sort of tracking that. It's pretty easy to track.

It's all in house. And then it's also, again, within the strategic plan, we've got a line item that council has that says, update the housing data and adopt the strategic housing action plan. I will save the I think the timeline for implementation is really just, like, staff workload. And so we do have one of our staff members from community initiatives division. It's kind of we're gonna be taking charge of that, so we're excited about it. From our perspective, we do we would like to have gotten that updated this year, and I suspect it's gonna continue to be our priority for next year.

Can I ask a question? So back in probably twenty seventeen, eighteen, we had an initiative that we were the city was trying to maybe go out and purchase properties that were smaller ones that could be, like, zero lot lines and then pay developers to develop them, but then keep them at affordable housing so we would remain in control of the the cost of the rentals. Did we ever move forward with any of the purchases, or did we ever initiate any of those programs to try

to create affordable housing in that in that way? It ended up shifting to more of a CDBG initiative. Okay. So we never got to the point of purchasing and finding the developers to do it, but we were able to, for example, on Broadway in Parkdale Mhmm. Take an old lot that was owned by the city.

It was an old fire station lot, built three homes Okay.

For people with CDBG disaster recovery money. So we've we've kind of morphed it into let's work with the money that we have and have it be a city initiative versus bringing in the private sector. Sell the homes then,

or is it a rental property? The city? Or is

it They went to flood victims of those particular homes.

Any other, like, ideas that the city's come up with in the last four or five years?

No. Because we've been waiting on the adoption of

the housing action plan. Gotcha. So keeping this at the top is something that needs to

be done is what the direction we really need. Housing is huge. Yeah. We just need that plan to be updated and adopted, and that's, like, the number one most important thing. It's been on the shelf for too long without being adopted.

Mhmm.

Cody, I see your hand is raised.

Yeah. I just wanted to ask a a strategic housing action plan. Does it include the those kinds of ideas? Like, just to orient me to what it actually offers. Is it is it like these are the strategic initiatives that are gonna be tackled to address housing in the community or, you know, these are the ways that we're going to have reduce homelessness. These are the ways that we're gonna improve, you know, rent stabilized, rent controlled properties. What what what does an action plan in this space give us?

Yeah. So it helps us. It's it's similar to a comp plan, but it's drilled down onto one topic. So it's a policy document that has goals and outcomes just like a comp plan does, but it's specifically around housing. So, you know, there were there are broad topics.

Some of them were about like, one of the the key goals is actually to increase the number of homes for folks at a certain price range is, like, a broad goal. So then there might be different actions underneath that goal to get you there. There was conversations of homelessness in that plan, but I think homelessness is such a more complicated topic that it deserves its own plan, and this one's kind of more focused on sort of supply, you know, kind of kind of pieces. But we do I can certainly send that to you. We do have it online still, and it just has a giant draft on it.

And to an extent, many of the themes, well, it's not adopted. Many of the components in there were also proposing development code changes, like, make it easier to build accessory dwelling units. Well, we don't need the action plan to actually go and do that. The purpose of an action plan is to just get buy in. Right? The that way you feel a council and the community feel confident that they are having kind of some say in in the topic and what they'd like to see. So some of that stuff is operated outside of the the plan.

Got it. Thank you.

Mhmm. Anywhere any of the plans that y'all remember, did they talk about aging up and aging out? Like, with the neighborhoods, like, trying to create neighborhoods that are are fully housed for all ages and types so you don't have to move just in the day and age that we're living in. People who wanna stay with that if they can't afford to move into retirement. And that's in the action plan. Seating in place is the term that was viewed. Okay. Mhmm.

I also think we have that in the comp plan and with land use, potentially. But in the housing action plan, we talked about the continuum of housing. And so as you age, you you potentially live in variety of different housing types. And I

I think many of us Partners townhouses back to Partners townhouses.

Mhmm. Yeah. Renting to ownership, you kinda just go through this phase in life, and then eventually, you move back over into renting smaller units. So it kind of is a circle. I believe we did talk about that in here, but it's would be encompassed in that housing action plan.

We we did. It's there's a note on HN 1.3.

Wow. Thank you.

Okay.

Yep. Aging in place.

Consistency. Very good.

Any questions on this one?

Okay. Here's that. This fiscal sustainability. So

one of

the priorities is to create a tool to analyze the fiscal sustainability defined as the long term public cost obligations and fiscal productivity of new development proposals. So how is new development contributing to our fiscal health either immediately or in the long term, like maintaining the roads that were built or, you know, aging infrastructure, those kinds of things. We would probably be the lead department on that, although it would be heavy collaboration with their finance department and with their economic development division. We have not initiated this primarily because implementation of this item will require consultant services. So we'd wanna, you know, primarily have a consultant to not just create, essay tool.

The tool is kind of the way that we can, take development requests and output numbers and see how the physical health is based off of their investment, but primarily to do education. So we we never wanna just create this new tool and say that it's important without explaining why it's important, why should we care about fiscal sustainability as a city. So we really would like assistance with that. There are really great firms. And so I think one of our first performance metrics would be to start to explore some of the consultant groups that are out there, figure out, you know, what services they provide, kind of what budget do we need to consider and kind of make a line item on.

Just because every time we wanna do a project, we need to make sure we've got it budgeted in for the next year. So if this is continuing to be a priority, that can help us kind of pitch to council that we'd like to to budget for that in an upcoming year. Can you explain what this actually

does? Like, long term public cost obligations and fiscal productivity of new development proposals. Like, just

Have you ever heard of Strong Towns, by chance, when they came to town?

Yeah. I remember that we did walks through town with them. Mhmm.

Yeah. It's kind of I would say Strong Towns has a really good example. They're just a a group of I think he's an engineer who kind of will be able to convey how development has sort of hidden cost to it. So, for example, single family neighborhoods that might be 50 foot lot lines. They're they're not a lot of density on a lot, but there's lots of roads that are having to be built for the single family neighborhood.

Mhmm. Often, the single family neighborhood might be really far away from cities kind of in in the peripheries. I think that happens in San Marcos as well. Mhmm. So that's a lot of water lines, wastewater lines, streets, all of that that over the long term is maintained and goes we have to budget for that operating cost. Gotcha now. Okay. Versus downtown, you might actually be getting when property downtown is going to potentially contribute a lot more to your tax base, you're generating a lot more fiscal, you know, revenue, right, revenue for the city, and there's only maybe four roads around it. So it's kind of explaining that sort of stuff.

I'll get

it done. Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. And the tool will help us figure out what are the inputs, what are the you you kind of What

are the road costs?

Yeah. Exactly. Which are things that we definitely need a consultant to go over run the Automatic

on this. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

I will say we have someone in our department who was the director of a city in Fate Fate, Texas did this tool, and so he actually has some experience doing education and working with a consultant on that. So we feel like we've got some kind of internal staff to help.

And with the analyze part of it, a big part we've been a very problem we've been having is tax bases falling off the tax rule because nontax entities are buying them. Mhmm. Would this tool or this analysis encompass the ability to understand the risk of losing a tax taxable entity?

Yeah. I suspect you could probably I mean, I think we did this with the budget. We were able to predict the properties that were coming off the tax rolls. We could predict how that impacted us just through our finance department running that. So I think this tool could make it maybe a little bit easier to run, like, scenarios like that Mhmm. Which hopefully don't happen, but, you know, we never know.

It's not what I You

never know. It's happening all the time. Yeah.

Depends on what you're talking about, I suppose. There are a couple that were done, the legislature kind of addressed it. But you can't yeah. We can't control if a tax not a tax exempt entity purchases a property.

Oh, well, I meant about people DNXing themselves.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, that's a really good point too is maybe there's a way that's that's a very new thing. Is

that yeah. Is that is that that's signed into action then. Yeah. Like, it's and that goes 2026 start up or what it or, like No. It's August. October. It always is. Have you seen any well, that just passed this legislative session, though. I thought it just passed this legislative session that you can actually I don't

I think that was 2020 or 2022.

Yeah. We've had Okay. 3,000 acres, really.

We've had 12,000 acres, at least. 12,000. That's from our ETJ, though. So we don't get the tax base from the ETJ like we do for city for in city properties. It's a lot harder to get out of the city unless we are not providing the services we agreed to. So if we're not providing utilities to the property when we said we would, it's a little bit easier to get out of city limits. But every disannexation we've had has not gone anywhere. The last one that happened was Willow Creek way back when. You know, way back

I was in it. Yeah.

So that's not easy to do.

And we'll find this. So other than the university, really nothing

else? Mhmm. Seeing. How's University Housing Authority, you know, the the long term housing tax credit projects when they partner with the housing authority or another tax exempt entity, those come off

the councils. Mhmm. So to me, that's one of the big risks we're facing as a city right now with creating huge budget shortfalls and addressing those risks and figuring out I don't I don't think we have any way to stop it, but to figure out what the cost of the risk is, seems like this tool would also be able to give us those kind of answers. Mhmm. So

when you say that a consulting company will help develop the tools, so then the tool can be utilized ongoing after the consultant company is Mhmm. The one we okay.

Yep. So

it'll be it'll be a tool you guys can continue using.

It's a it's an Excel table to an extent. You know? But the really, the big benefit is the education. I could easily take another city's tool, plug in city numbers. It wouldn't be quite fleshed out because we're every city is different, but it wouldn't really mean anything to anyone because it requires education and understanding because the intent is that it's just another way for you to analyze your decision make your decisions.

So when we take a zoning case or something like that, we tell you how close it is to a park and, you know, how you know, is there water in infrastructure? Like, what are the land uses around it? One of the other inputs would be, what is it going to do to the this will help? Would be just another input. And that just goes into council and planning commission's decision to be processed so they could always state, well, that's a trade off. I'm willing to have it because they're giving us this. You know?

But it's just giving us eyes by them.

Exactly. It gives it's just more transparent

and gives them a way to supposed decision making.

Well, I I think it's really easy for those conversations to be like, yeah. We're gonna grow the tax base with this or but there's no, like, hard data behind that, and it might just be a talking point. Yeah. So you can put some of that to rest with this type of thing, I think.

Well, it helps. Like, I mean, there's so much information. You can just hand somebody a chart and say, okay. Analyze it. Here it is and make your decision.

Mhmm.

Yeah. It's good. So, theoretically, you could use this tool to predict the cost cost or benefit to the city of, a data center.

Mhmm.

This data center would stick on the building.

That's one thing. This data center would stick on the area.

You can talk about that right now.

What what would be the benefit cost benefit?

That's what the

stool would do. Like, let's So it sounds like we

wanna keep this on

our heads. There's okay. I have a question on that too.

So let's just say you well, because housing

is going crazy right now, especially East Side housing. I've been working at Lockhart and driving through the back roads. Whoo. And Kyle and Gouda. Yeah. Amazing. So, you know, now Now we need all these roads. So that would help people as they're approving these new developments in whatever community you're at. Okay. Well, then we're gonna need to enhance and expand these roads systems in order to have the capacity for all these new houses. So that can come up at the front end of approving developments to know if there needs to be more cost sharing along the way or something or just at least that you know.

And I would argue I would argue that those types of developments popping up where it's like, oh, man. There's 700 new houses out here randomly. Those are some of the biggest financial pitfalls that a city can

Because of the infrastructure that's needed to get done.

Yeah. In fifteen years, it's not gonna be nice and new, and your your impact fees are not gonna be you can't collect those forever. And so then you're stuck with this thing that doesn't pay for itself.

Yeah. And then the 20 bid is expired.

Yeah. And it would be great for a city not to be on the hook for that indefinitely.

So knowing those costs up front is so helpful. Yeah. Mhmm.

How do

you grow your city responsibly? Mhmm. Physically responsible. Yeah.

Yeah. It'll it'll max out your credit cards as a city.

That's a good one.

Thank you.

Alright. LU 3.8, ensure state crossing options under I 35 corridor and other major arterial and high traffic roadways to connect neighborhoods and residents. This is about, you know, really, I think, weaving the East and west together through 35. Lead department is engineering and CIP just because to kind of go under a existing highway is a very much capital project. We have a project going on now.

It's been happening for a little while, but it's giving it an in progress status. This is just focusing on one connection that we're working on. I think there are plenty of opportunities. I think this this will be relevant for a long time because there will always be, you know, potential crossings that could be happening at different intersections. But we have a a plan that is on our CIP website. You can actually do this for the plans to kind of improve the shared use path that goes between Blanco Gardens and sort of the Discovery Center area. So it was there for a really long time. Mhmm. You could, you know,

I was back. Bonnie Pav was here.

Yeah. Got it. Take your walk, take your bike, and then you have to cross the frontage road. Yeah. And then now you're in Blanco Gardens on, like, kind of just the dirt. And it's just completely transformed for a variety of reasons. But one, the TxDOT project raised the frontage roads. Right? So you now they're elevated. And so the shared use path underneath the highway, you don't have to cross any roads. It's just fluid. And are

they dirt anywhere near dirt right now?

They concrete? They're concrete. Yeah. Okay. Yep. I've ridden it. It's it's really getting very close to being done, at least that portion, because TxDOT also was working on a Sherby's path along the southbound French road as well. So that is gonna kind of connect in. And then what we're talking about here is we're saying that plans are in design with a 100% plans expected in 2026. That's actually weaving in a next component.

So when you're at the Discovery Center and you are coming from Blanco Gardens, you have to go right or left on the frontage road just to kind of get into the West Side Of 35. Mhmm. What we're working on are plans to where you can actually now take this really nice bridge across the river into the Riverfront Park Trail. So I think that's a major, you know, component because it puts people who are biking or walking in just a safer condition. So nice. And it gets them onto a, like, broader transportation corridor. So now the Riverfront Trail, it'll go all the way up to Sewell. So now you have the ability to then spur from it. So that's what engineering's talking about here, that they have plans. Mhmm.

Does this also include maybe just simpler, safer pedestrian crossings for longer blocks that don't have crosswalks, like Hopkins out of here implemented those those crossing lines. Does this also encompass things like that?

I think this particular item is mainly just talking about 35 specifically, like, getting across 35. Right.

It says and other.

And other

Oh, it does. And other.

So I would say, yeah, it could encompass more than just I 30. Yeah. Though that was probably our focus because it's the biggest.

Right. Yeah. I'm also thinking about Highway 80 Yeah. On the East Side for pedestrians and, you know, something like that.

The point you're making too,

like, when the conversation came up, people who live on the East Side who don't own a vehicle, they couldn't safely transport to the library, the activity center. So if you live on one Side Of 80 or you're trying to get from this to this side, you're still in the same boat. Like, if you can still get over here, but you can't get back over there a year. So finding all those connections along the way to make it fully connected. Yeah.

Just yeah.

Just Yeah. That makes a lot

of sense. Okay. Yeah. No. That's a great point.

Cool.

So, yeah, that's good. So let's see. So we'll have plans done in 2026, and then that's that's a pretty significant project because it's building a bridge, pedestrian bridge across the river. But and it also includes some habitat conservation plan kind of initiatives as well. We also did kinda put in here that we wanna evaluate I think this was specifically looking at '35.

But through the transportation master planning process, I think it'd be great to evaluate what are the other priority crossings, you know, at 35 that we need to be looking at. The transportation master plan is pretty high level on it, but I think we should state just generally as a bike rider, McCarty is the only spot that anyone takes to cross 35. It's it's that Sherby's Path or it's McCarty. They're maybe CenterPoint, but no one takes Wonderworld. No one takes AD. You know? It's just so I think trying to figure out where are people crossing now as the priority and then, you know, what can be done about it with tech stock because that's gonna require kind of some collaboration.

Think Wonderworld, but it's dangerous.

Yeah. One of the interesting benefits of Wonderworld right now, just a quick aside, is there's a project being constructed right under the Wonderworld under this. Trade is? Mhmm.

Yeah. Because it's been bought off a

lot it. It the next property over is the police station. Mhmm. And that gate, you know, it's public. So there's a public road that goes. And then you're in the police station Yeah. Property. And then after that, I think there is a hole. And then there's Barnes. Right? So Barnes should, on the transformation master plan, fully connect. So it's almost there. Okay. Almost there.

I was wondering about Barnes because it looked like alright. I didn't even I gotta go do some UPS the other day. I just

I didn't even know all that

was there until I dropped. I was like, wow. Is this cool?

Yeah. So maybe there'll be at least a safer journey, but you'll have to stop the train. Right. Bike rider. Right. Didn't even know it happened. This is safer. Brought an overpass.

I know I have a new. I

just wanted where where is the bridge going over the river? Is it on the east side or the west side? The pedestrian bridge? On the

west side. Okay. So right behind the Discovery Center.

Camp area. Right? Okay. So bef after Girl Scout camp then.

Mhmm.

Okay. So my thought on this action item is if a lot of this is already in progress, it's already being done. And if the transportation master plan can address some of this stuff, again, maybe we wanna refocus our attention from this action item to to maybe the master plan or is keeping us here helping to prioritize this in the transportation master plan? Like, if we if we eliminated this goal, this action item

Yes, sir.

That diminish this in the transportation master plan update? Because if the transportation master plan can address this and a lot of these priorities are already in progress.

It would diminish its its importance in the transportation master plan because engineers are already thinking about it. Right?

What I'm what I'm proposing is maybe remove this as one of our stated action items.

What we could do if you did wanna prioritize transportation master plan is we could, in that narrative, elevate, say, you know, we were assessing the connectivity, and we want that

Mhmm.

Which is l u 3.8. We want that to be one of the priorities of the TMP

so

we can always feel about it that

way. Mhmm.

Because anyway, this could be elevated just needs to stay on the elevation chart forever and ever. Yeah.

Not that it's a bad thing, but is there another way to do this without explicitly saying this? Yeah.

You know, I think I get I think I get where you're going. It's like this the priority that we're sort of coalescing around is transportation. I suppose we have to ask ourselves, is there value in saying what in the transportation plan is most important to us? And is stuff like this know, the transportation the transportation plan is something that needs to be prioritized. Wanna make sure that there's an update.

Very important. But is there value in this group stating that stuff projects like this are part of a particular interest to us? And I don't know I don't know the interplay between our reporting to the the council and and staff and and and how much emphasis is placed, but that might be the important question to determine if something like this should come off of our come off of our list. And I don't know the answer to it. It's just something I've been thinking about because I know this has come up twice now.

Yeah. Thank you, Cody. That's kind of my thoughts.

Okay. That was my last slide on that. So kind of went over this already. We don't have any concerns with all with what you recommended. The only thing I wanted to call out was that 2.2, you know, there is an opportunity to evaluate or start the transportation master plan. So I was kind of already going around what you were saying. But we can, of course, still keep that as a priority. That's what you guys would like to do, and then we would just kind of emphasize the evaluate piece.

I I like maybe just highlighting the transportation master plan and then putting underneath it some of the higher concerns within that. And Yeah. Yep. That sounds good to you guys.

I I think that's a strategic move. Yeah. So we wanna prioritize the transportation master plan update. And in that update, we would like to see these items be prioritized Yeah. In that plan. I like that. Not necessarily saying, alright, counsel. You need to prioritize these transportation things. You need to prioritize the transportation master plan. And these And and when they do that, that's that committee that does the plan will then prioritize these other other things. Because it's not counsel to prioritize things inside that plan. Mhmm. And then that plan is gonna

kick off wood for the community?

Good question. I will find a final date, but we have, I believe, selected a consultant already.

So Okay. So sometime early twenty twenty six maybe? Most likely.

There will be, I believe, a committee as part of that as well. So there might be an opportunity to participate. That's quite interesting. Okay. I've taken down some notes.

So this is just we we did this through the meeting, and that's totally fine. You I guys gave me feedback on your six priority actions. Really, if there's anything else that you would like to include, you still have an opportunity to do that, and then at the October meeting, we can discuss it. What I was proposing to do is based off what I heard today, maybe put together just kind of a framework that would go into your recommendation resolution that has your priorities, kind of any anything I've heard today where you're sort of stating why you were choosing it. It'll just be a draft.

And then at the next meeting, what we'll do is we'll have an item on the agenda where you all can kind of recommend the language that you might wanna add into it just to make sure that I'm not putting words in your mouth. You can tell me why you want that to be elevated. And then that page will be part of recommendation resolution that you'll come get signed, and then we'll take that forward to counsel.

I have a question. And I did not do any homework on this question, which is why I'm asking it today. So anywhere in our scope, can we comment or discuss, like, uses in residential neighborhoods, like Warner coffee shops? Or, like, is there anything that's been integrated in the last four or five years that allows something like that with more ease? So now for a long time, the the concern was, well, if you can change the use in the neighborhood, that means you're gonna have to bring coffees everywhere. Mhmm. But, like, simple things like coffee shops and corner stores and things that they is there anything in

I will say the comp plan does say that, though. So, you know, to the extent of understanding what the comp plan says, I think that's totally appropriate to discuss. The comp plan talks about so it took it scrapped the old future land use map and created a a new one, and that had different place types. And so and that could always be something I drill down into a little bit more because it helps you at least understand the actions. But those place types then said, hey.

You should you should have these types of general uses within this color on the map. And I will say it did kind of beef up the location of, I think, amenities and goods and services because we kept hearing from folks that they felt so far especially in on the East Side Of 35, they felt so far away from getting to any goods and services and kind of feeling the West Side was a little bit more.

So it's more accessible, possibly. Yeah. Except and the reason why it came to my mind is because we're talking about transportation. Yeah. And the whole thing about transportation is accessibility. And if you have to go, I mean, five miles away to find a coffee shop, well, maybe we make the use of some more accessible so it's not just transportation. It's that with that to make

the whole thing. Think the opportunity to get more detailed input on that is through our development code process Okay. Which will be out for public consumption probably September. Really? Okay. And we can always send

an email to our boards and commissions and make

sure that y'all know what's happening. Yeah. Because that's your opportunity to get in there and say, hey. This zoning district could really benefit from whatever, you know, going and looking at that land use matrix and thinking about where those types of things are important. I would I would say that's more code related because it's very detailed Mhmm. Technical versus this where we're kind of up in the clouds. Sure. Yeah. But then just the the transportation thing we can get at to.

Why are we even discussing transportation? What's the use? Why do we even have it as a concern? Accessibility of everything and responsibility. Yeah.

Yeah. I figure on your justification for why you chose some of these is you wanted to focus on transportation because you wanted to have access to goods and services.

Anybody like that? I love that.

Yeah. Yeah. We wanna add that. You know? I'm good with adding that. The reason why we're concerned with transportation is the access of business services Yeah. In community neighborhoods. Yes. Yes. Got it.

Okay. Any other discussion at this stage? Just to recap what what I'm gonna do is create that priority list. I'll put in some bullet points and kinda what I heard today. The next meeting, you'll still have a chance to look at it and can discuss and make revisions to it, and then it'll take formal action. Do we have any number between now and then? No? Let's see. If you look at if you see anything else, I suppose, that you wanna bring up to the group and say, hey. I've actually I took a look at this. I'd like this one to be a priority. I think the next week could be an opportunity to still do that.

Okay. Yeah.

I like EMV three point three and three point four.

Which page is it, Robert? Page four. Is it it's right here on the middle. Page three. Three? Three of the charts.

Yeah. It says page three. Which one was it? The green the green chart.

Which one

is it? EMV three point three and three point four. They kinda go together. So last last time when we had the discussion about green building standards, I had misunderstood what this action item was actually saying. I think the green building standards is for city facilities.

Not saying a private development has to do a green building standard. Like, we can't require private builders to do green building, but the city can prioritize that in their own city projects. And I'm really thinking here about the new city hall project. I don't know if maybe if we put this off for the next year, this this 03/2003, if we talk about it next year, if that's gonna be too late. Because I know there is a

You'll have plenty of time. City facility planning committee. Fast fast. You'll fast like And he's moving that fast. Yeah.

No. Nothing moves that fast.

Okay.

So I mean, it's

I put to play that we because I wanna

I wanna get 3.3 in before we start planning city hall and then we have new

And that would be

a really good one too, Robert. Like, when you guys get that feasibility study you do.

Like Yeah.

That stuff. Like, if we go up front, we put that money into now. What does it save the taxpayers later on with green infrastructure? Interesting. Solar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So that would be kind those would

be really cool things to do on those things. Yeah. You might pay up front a little bit more, but in the long run, what's the cost? Mhmm.

So maybe if I had to choose, I guess, three point four, Cody, I think. Did you have a question, Cody?

I was gonna say something, but someone got to it first, so I'm good.

No.

I I agree with you on 3.4, but I would lean heavily on the word encourage over require.

That's a keyword.

Because that is also, you know, sort of an inverse relationship with affordability when

So you wanna put require, not encourage?

No. I would rather leave encourage.

Okay. What kind

of a

cheat is that? Like

There's no way to require. I work for City Austin Energy Green Building. That's my job. We we cannot we cannot require I

I think your city requirements are more in land use and the layout and requiring someone to have a specific piece of construction on their property for sustainability is fantastic, but it's also very expensive. And I think it's about us with affordability. So

Not sure if city of Austin requires all affordable projects. City of Austin does require all affordable projects to

do green building. Well, capital A affordable. If we just want market rate

Right.

Small a affordable, It's tough to do that with very stringent, you know, solar requirements or whatever.

Yeah.

So the the the green part of that is probably encouraging wind uses that are closer together and

Yeah.

Minimizing vehicle trips and things like that. Yeah. And then you can always retrofit with your sustainability. We're probably getting weeds on that again, but I'm I'm wary of requirements because it's it's it's great. I wish every building had all that, but it's also expensive. So

3.3 would be a requirement for the city. 3.4 would be incentive incentivizing private developers.

In incentivizing

Denimizing private development. That's what we're Can we

just do both of them? I mean, do we have the capacity? Have we have we eliminated anything?

I think we would probably be in the responsible department on those. And my first thought would be on the establishing green building standards. You know, you say it it would just be your city buildings, but green building standards could be established as an incentive. Right? So if you did a economic incent a chapter three eighty economic development incentive agreement, that's where you can start to flush some of that stuff out.

So it almost I almost feel like that could be something that's discussed even in the policy, the economic development policy. Like, what are the things that we're trying to attract here, and what are the standards and framework of what's important to same markets to have? I'm not sure that his that that policy would get into that detail, but, you know, I I do see 3.3 as not just being city stuff. Although, yes, we can that's the only thing we can control. Mhmm.

On 3.4, what I've kind of leaning towards in my mind is the conservation style development. So we are kind of refining the planning Area zoning district right now through the development code process. The Planning Area district is actually meant to be a conservation style zoning district. So in a way, we can't require someone to pick that zoning district. But if it's attractive enough, someone will choose it, and they're going to be getting what they want out of maybe a land use, but it's gonna require 50% of c d one zoning.

C d one zoning is like open space zoning. So it is actually a a true amendment we are proposing is to refine that to where you can actually do a lot more uses in one of our planning area districts, but you save 50% of the land is open space. So that's conservation style development. That's getting down to the land use level, not like you must do this specific thing on your building, and that, you know, in a way is one way to approach it. So 3.4, I think we have a little bit more ability to do. Like, I could see myself moving the needle on that, and 3.3, again, would be like a city thing.

You said three point three point four would be more I could

see us moving. I think I could I could demonstrate that we are doing regulatory changes to get to conservation style development.

So we do 3.4 then if that's something you think you could actually put into motion. I agree. Yeah.

Because I think the the comp plan has some, like, conservation buster type development rollouts that that that's what I mean whenever it's, like, sustainable development in that way that allows you to you know, instead of having x number of homes that takes up an entire tract of land, you have x number of homes here in more of a clustered village style, and then you have all this green space around it and maybe the trail connections and whatnot. And I think that's much more palatable for a developer as well. And it's just really cool to Mhmm. Have difference like that.

But we're gonna do 3.4 clarinet.

Add add that to the Yeah. The little to vote Yeah. K.

Thanks for bringing that forward, Robert. Yeah. Okay.

Anyone else have any additions they'd like to earmark in? Yeah. Alright. Cody, any comments on your side?

No. I'm good. Thank you.

Alright. Andrea, is there any more you need to say?

Yes. I took a look at our minutes and found all the questions you have from the last meeting. I wanted to at least not leave you hanging. So these were questions that you're having during your discussion, so I tracked down some of the responses for you. I think this is also a resource I can probably just email to you all just so you can kinda see it. So Please do.

What if y'all ask, what's the status of

the arts in public places program? And so that's actually our our CVB convention visitor bureau department, and we have a staff member who kind of runs the arts master plan. So the art initiatives aren't actually called an art in public places program. I think the naming just maybe was that during during the beginning of the comp plan, and then over four years, it changed. But we do have a list that I can send you of all the different things that have been accomplished on the related to that kind of the program. They didn't give me the name. They just call it public art. Right? Because it's art in public places. It's just public art.

K. So a couple things. We've implemented a gallery in City Hall. They hosted a mural jam at the ArtFest downtown, which is hanging out, playing music downtown next to a mural while the artist was painting. They've departments installed four new sculptures at the art park.

They're also working on an installation at the library. They completed the flows through San Marcos, which is a big mural entry in downtown. It's on the back of where industries that MLK, that massive mural that went across. Miss Ollie's store, if you guys have seen that mural, it's over off of 404 Center Street in the MLK or in the Dunbar neighborhood. Just really cool mural of miss Ollie, and she had a little, like, corner market store there.

Let's see. There's been a new neuro at City Hall. Yeah. They've just done a lot of great mural work. The other thing that's in the works is they're working on a Dunbar history walk. So something can go online and actually walk through a history and hear oral stories of folks from that neighborhood, and I I think they'll be at, like, in person interactive interactive things. Things. You can go and scan a QR code. And then they're also working on a performing arts center feasibility study, so that should be interesting. And then arts master plan, so totally separate.

This is the actual arts master plan adopted in 2021, I believe. They have they don't I'm not sure that they have a specific committee that works on implementation, but I will send you all the specific actions that they've already kind of checked off. The feasibility study for the performing arts center, for example, is actually from the arts master plan. And then they also have kind of their own tracking. They have, like, an internal smart sheet.

So they're going in and doing exactly what we're doing, but just kind of on an internal internal level. Know that they are also exploring ways to put that on dashboard, so that can be something you guys can see. Okay. Next one was, is there an opportunity to bring back the youth master plan? So the youth master plan was done in 2013, adopted in 2013, and that was a city initiative done by the parks department.

Since then, kind of youth programming and sort of that master plan actually actually lives within the community action organization, which is an organization in town. They are the group that has you might have seen some some things on the city page. They have this movement called the core four partnership. Mhmm. So it's city, county, university, and school district.

So that core four partnership was established by ordinance by city council, and their kind of job is to actually implement the youth master plan. They have a specific liaison. It's the community action youth services director. So that's really great for the city because there's another person who has funding that city contributes to that partnership. It's actually kind of doing those programs.

All of that to say that that master plan lives with kind of that group. So we if it was to be updated, it would really kind of come from that four four group. I think I did bring that up to the arts department, and they kind of mentioned, you know, it would be great for them to it's pretty old now. It's as old as our former comp plan. So but that wouldn't necessarily be something that we would initiate and probably stay there just because we have the capacity.

Resources to support target industries. I did not track this down fully, but that's, I think, really plays into our economic development policy. It's just kind of better understanding some of that. What I would say in the planning department, what we see the most is the three eighty incentive agreements being kind of the way to decide, well, do we wanna give someone an incentive agreement or not? We would typically be looking at incentive agreements if it's bringing something that is a target industry that we want to come here.

So that's a tool that our department is mainly interacting with, but that's all handled in the economic development world. How do we get existing developments to comply with new standards? Very difficult. I did wanna at least just because I think it's important for people to understand that if we adopt a new code or a new standard, we cannot make someone else just come into compliance, but we can have triggers. So, for example, we have landscaping standards, and we have standards, regulations of state.

If you're adding if you're an existing development and you are really old and you're from the eighties and you wanna improve your property. You wanna add new and purpose cover. You wanna add a new building, something like that. Anything that's new always has to meet the standards. Right?

So it's new it's new and purpose cover. You must meet our new standards. But to get the entire development to comply, there are triggers. So it might state in the code, once you add more than 25% of the lot with impervious cover, now you fall into the entire landscape being applies to your property, and the whole site needs to be brought up. A good example of that that I remember reviewing is Dairy Queen over off of Highway 80.

Been there forever since I was a kid, and they wanted to do a massive remodel. And so there are different triggers that can actually make folder structures come into compliance, but it always requires them to come to the table first. So just some context on that. There's there's different triggers all throughout the code for that kind of stuff. So okay.

What ways do we use to evaluate impacts of recreation on the river? The big piece here in talking with the parks department is habitat conservation plan, and our staff members there really do look at that. Their full job is to better understand the health of the river, and so they're kind of able to track that in a more scientific way, I'd say. In terms of just, like, qualitative data, though, we have park ambassadors with the city who actually go and talk to tons of river users. So they're having a lot of interactions with the residents who or visitors who have come to the river.

There's this very large spreadsheet and dashboard where they kind of keep track of the interactions, kind of keep track of the things that they're seeing. And so all of that information has played into the decision making that's kind of had been, you know, happening in council and then also plays into the the park plan that's going on right now for the riverfront parks. There's not just, like, one way that they're kind of tracking it, but there's just it's certainly something that everyone has an eye on from a bunch of different people. So Yeah. And everybody is connected. Yeah. Right. Is it the river brain chairs?

Is that what Rachel's standpoint? Is she

is in she charge of

that, or they go and do samples of the river?

That's that's a separate habitat conservation program. So But they don't rangers.

Okay. But don't they but aren't they connected where they turn in the data, though? Like, if we're looking at

The river rangers monitor the water quality.

But do they turn that into the city, though? Does the city can look at that?

It's it's public data. So the the

City can look at if they wanted to.

Okay. Good. Yeah.

I don't know the answer to that, but I can always

All the water quality monitoring across the state is put into a public data rate map. You can click on any section of any river in the state and see what the water quality is over time and see the history of that.

So would that would that probably would help us throughout the season to see when it's high season, what water quality is after flooding. Like, do we track that? Then, like, if we're looking for

San Marcos is the most monitored river in Texas.

Mhmm. I'm sure Mark Enders, he's the staff person who does that. I'm sure he tracks extensively. I think he'd also be the person to help us create metrics for some of the environmental Mhmm. You know, actions is how are we gonna measure it over time. There's probably some kind of other scientific way to kind of, you know, look at that. Okay. We were asked if if there's an existing study that addresses if student housing is beneficial. I have not found anything. Looked through purpose housing? Yes. Okay. Purpose built student housing is beneficial. I think that's a little hard to answer because beneficial, I think, is very broad statement. Right?

It's housing for for someone, so it is providing housing. There's no specific study that I have found. I know we've had staff members go to the town and gown conferences as well just to kind of because those are town and gown conferences or conferences that are in university town. So they're about those specific things. But I haven't necessarily found something, you know, and and we've we have done research through this because we have requests that come through.

I think that's really just like a local based policy decision as to what is does beneficial mean. You know? So if if we find things that come out, I think as cities are growing, it continues to be something that's discussed, but nothing that I know of in my planning surplus. But Doctor. Ray might actually be a pretty good resource there. There.

So I

was gonna say, sounds like a great dissertation.

I know

you get a professor to have only a doctoral students do that study.

Yes, Cody?

I was just gonna add it. It seems to me that the the question oftentimes comes around, like, many times folks who are not associated with the university are really trying to figure out, like, how much traffic is it adding, or is there an economic benefit, or is there, you know, maybe, you know, incidents of of loud of complaints about things being loud. I think when we think about this, we have to be careful, like, not to over index on the metrics we don't like about the university and be fair and be fair. If we haven't aren't doing anything on it, that that then, you know, moot point. But, I like to make the the point that sometimes, we townies like to hate on our our, student neighbors, and we should be careful of that inclination.

But but I will say too, Cody, on that one, like, when I look at it a lot of times, although everything you just mentioned is relevant, I also wonder how healthy it is for students as well if that's the majority of their options for housing too. So, anyway, because if I don't think it's just the ones you mentioned, although they are fairly relevant, but I always also wanna refer to students themselves too.

Okay.

Last one. What is the process or timing to move a bus stop from one spot to another? And I would say that is a very depends answer that that I got. So right now, we are looking at a route study. So that's through the transportation master plan that's in the public works department is to figure out, you know, what or do our routes need to be moved?

I will say people can always request to have a stop moved or to create a new stop, And then that process really just has to go through a bunch of federal guidelines about where the location is. And if you guys want more information, though, the manager of that, her name is Amy Finn. She did, you know, kind of offer there's more information if you guys want kind of to have a rundown of that. That can be something as it relates to maybe one of the action items. We could always do that.

I do think, though, that that topic will be discussed in the transit plan once that kind of comes into a public comment. You know? And then is the bus route still moving to the mobility hub? So they're conducting that route study, and they're looking at different options for the transit hub to see if the mobility hub can function as a transit stop. The other location that we that was identified in the 2019 transit plan was on Edward Gary, and it was actually called, like, the Transit Plaza, and that was kind of a larger supposed to be, like, more regional interchange.

So instead of having it down kind of at the bus station, there was another one kind of up here. And that's in the transit plan. We also put it into the downtown master plan as well. So they're I think they're getting close to having it available for public review, the study that they're working on now. Is a transit plan underneath the transportation master plan?

I think, yes. Transportation master plan probably talks, like, high level about all modes of transportation. Then the transit plan is more specific and more technical because it's again, there's a lot of federal money, federal guidelines, and and all of that to be able to maintain it. So I think it I think the transportation master plan does discuss the transit plan. I think it might have even said to create a transit plan. I think we might also need to have a transit plan in order to qualify for certain grants and funding. Yes.

Mhmm. So

I just didn't wanna leave you out hanging on those questions.

Thank you so much for doing that. It took a lot of time. Thanks,

Yeah.

Well, it's good for me to learn because we're the jack of all trades.

You know? You kinda have to know

a little bit about it. And then let me just zoom in really quickly just to show you. So departments, that's a big thing to always remember is we're not just because you guys are looking at six or seven, that doesn't mean that all the other ones aren't being looked at. So I'll be getting those final inputs from the departments in August, and then that report will actually go into your next packet. So you'll be able to actually go in and see kind of the progress we're making on everything. So you might see something in there and say, you know what? We're already making really good progress. Let's add, you know, add that in. I'm just caution on too many probably would be, I think, I'd say. Meeting three will be in October.

I'll send a doodle poll for availability then. And then after that, we'll prepare that packet for council, and it'll go to city council in November for presentation. And that'll just be a presentation. It's an action by council. We just wanna go to them each year to convey kind

of the

work you guys did.

November.

November. Mhmm. And that would be one that if you all are able to attend, that would be great. We can also talk about kind of what that presentation sort of looks like. But in the past, we had our chair present that presentation kind of a joint joint piece, so that can always be something that we can do. After that, the reports, we are working with IT on that dashboard y'all talked about, to figure out the best technology for that. And then we'll post the report on the website, and then we go to strategic plan, and then it starts all over again. Yeah.

One day, November will come.

Oh, man.

It's almost here. I'm getting married in November too. You are? Congratulations.

Sure. That's all I have.

Thank

you, Andrea, for that.

We come to the question and answer session of the press and public. This is an opportunity for the press and public to ask questions related to the items on this agenda. Persons wishing to participate remotely in the q and a sessions must email 994@samergustx.gov beginning the day prior to the meeting before 12PM, the day of the meeting. Call in number to join by phone or link will be provided for participation on a mobile device, laptop, or desktop computer. If attending in person, no sign up is required. I don't see any press or public. I need a motion to adjourn. Lisa first, Cody second. Roll call, please.

Robert Eby?

Yes.

Lisa Pruitts?

Yes.

Gabby Moore? Yes. Cody Soda?

Yes.

Brilliance looking. Yes.

I joined the meeting at 07:13.

Well done.

Thanks, y'all.

Thank you.

I will still do it.