Welcome, everyone, to the November 13, 2025 city council meeting. We have not completed the executive agenda. So the executive session is recessed until we complete the regular agenda. And then we'll go back into executive session after that. So anyway, welcome, everybody. I apologize. We're a little bit late getting out here, but still working on city business of many different kinds.
And so we'll move ahead with the regular agenda, which picks up with the Pledge of Allegiance
invocation.
And that's item 4 on the agenda, so I'll lead the Pledge of Allegiance.
If you'll remain standing after that, Council Member White will do the invocation.
to
the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation that we are in the visible with liberty and justice for all.
On our behalf of the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God, one in the
Please remain standing.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord,
we come before you tonight with grateful hearts,
acknowledging your goodness in every season of our lives.
We thank you for the beautiful fall weather that surrounds us.
For the cooler air, the changing colors,
and the sense of renewal it brings to our community.
These simple gifts remind us of your presence
and of your faithfulness or guide our thoughts, our words, and our decisions
this evening, grant us wisdom to lead with integrity, compassion, and unity as we
serve the people of college station. Bless our citizens, our city staff, our
first responders, and all who work each day to make this community strong and vibrant.
May your peace be with our citizens and may everything we do bring honor to
your name in your holy name we pray. Amen.
Thank you councilmember White.
We have a speaker protocol which all of you that have picked up an agenda or have looked
online you know pretty much what it is.
There are several people that have signed up to speak on a couple of three different items.
So we will have a rather lengthy meeting I'm sure but everyone stays in their three-minute
the time slot will be good and I'll try to encourage people along as those items come
up. So we move on to the just for the page here visitors and here visitors I do have
one person signed up to speak from a council member Elizabeth Kunha. Is she here? There
There she is, welcome back.
Good evening, council and mayor.
My name is Elizabeth Kuna, I live in Shannon, DOA in College Station, Texas.
And I just wanted to take just a moment to recognize a shift in the narrative.
For as many years as I've lived in College Station, when people have complained about their property tax bill,
we've patiently explained that there are three contributors to the bill.
There's the city, there's the county, and there's the school district.
And that the city is not the largest contributor to that bill.
That's the way it's been for all the over three decades that I paid the bill.
But this year, when I opened up my bill, the narrative shifted.
And so because it shifted, I just wanted to mark it in this way.
For the first time, when I looked at my bill, the city of conversation was indeed the largest contributor to the bill.
Larger than the school district, which employs twice as many people, larger than the county.
That is in part because the state legislature provided a nice home set exemption for us.
That's what causes the numbers to be different.
But the numbers are different, and the narrative will have to shift.
And I just wanted to take a moment to recognize that shift.
And I appreciate the council's opportunity to use here visitors to mark that difference.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ms. Guna.
Okay, that's the only person signed up for
For that item, we will now move to the consent agenda, and the consent agenda has quite a few items.
Let me just check here 6.1 through 6.17, so I'll ask council members in their wisdom and
discretion if there's any of those that they wish to have questions answered.
Mr. Yancey, which one?
Thank you, Mayor Nichols, recognizing the lateness of the evening.
I'm going to rapid fire just a few questions.
Unfortunately, the following two, four, ten, and thirteen.
Two, six point two, six point four.
Right, and what was the last one?
Ten and thirteen, sir.
Ten, ten, six point ten, and thirteen.
Yes, sir.
All right.
Seeing nobody else raising their hand, item six point two is
Ms. Cane, I'll read the header.
Presentation discussion, possible action on city's indefinite delivery and
definite quantity, IDIQ list, where identified firms we pre-qualified to provide
on call as needed professional services for 22 different categories based on their qualifications.
Ms. Cane.
Good evening, Jennifer Cane, capital projects.
Thank you for all you do, Ms. Cane.
Sorry for the directness of the questions.
First an observation, I'm very happy to see Guestner engineering on this list.
I hope they are competitive and quality enough that we can use them soon in the future.
I see there's two instances of Guestner, but how did half make this list?
Given the geotest failure on the first go round of baseball fields,
why are we giving them that opportunity and why not withhold it until they do the right thing?
And on that now, three-year-old, two-and-a-half-year-old matter.
So, I may let Adam if you would say anything, but we evaluated these independent land, and
we looked at them based on their qualifications that they submitted and for the categories
that they submitted.
I mean, you just see which one they were on, but it was not the same capacity that they worked
on the ball fields.
Thank you very much, Mayor.
As one member of council, I don't think it's appropriate for them to get an indefinite
duration and definite quantity of status bestowed upon them unless and until the soil test failure is resolved satisfactorily.
We've been talking about it forever, we still don't know what's next.
May I move, sir, that we remove them from the process?
No, we're going through the questions first and we come back and we will vote on the entire group.
And if you wish to withhold that for a separate vote, you may do so.
Thank you, sir.
So, six points that I think you've done with that comment.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Six point four, also for Miss Cain.
This sort of presentation is held to the possible action and construction contract with
Merrick Brothers, construction for the CSU Operation Expansion, amount of $2,653,000, $150,000,
plus the city's contingency, in the amount of $265,000, $315,000 for appropriation of 2.2,000,
Again, nine are 18,465.
Prove a list item, grant storage, city manager to authorize project expenditures up to the city's contingency amount,
miscane, and the mystery and see.
To do I have this right, and I may not.
I need your help, 2.653 million on construction of this 4,500 square foot building.
Correct?
Yes.
And 1.202, where did I get that number in design, or expenditures to date, I presume most of that's design.
It is, yes, and this one is a little bit different when you look at the, because it's part of electric funds.
I just want to clarify this, it's a little bit different than what you normally see on capital projects.
Like on water streets or something else. And so the total budget included, like the 5.15 million, that's a category that electric has for multiple projects.
And this one was one of the ones allocated to it.
And so a portion actually of that one point to you, I actually don't have a number off the top of my head for design.
But some of that is funds that have been expaned on other things in that same chunk of money.
Okay, so design, that's the heart of my quandary.
Design does not reflect better than 40% of the cost of this 4500 square foot building.
No, it was not and I can find out that exact number for you.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you, Mayor Nichols.
Okay, we go to the next item you've called, which has 6.10 presentation discussion possible
action in the second amendment to the Exxon Enterprises for Mike Pavellka, somebody over there
is chief.
You know, thank you.
In the discussion possible action, the second amendment to the Exxon Enterprises Incorporated
10-year Master of Service Agreement, adding an AI-assisted report writing for an increase
So approximately 944,580 dollars.
Chief.
Good evening, Mayor Council.
Thank you very much, Chief, for your service to the city.
First and observation, not directed at the police department.
$27,000 of this contract will go to source well
under their group purchasing organization contract.
If you look at all of the pieces parts of this contract,
648,664, and 710,000,
And ultimately, they'll be paid $60,000 for negotiating this deal.
I believe that the staff we have, the City of College Station, can do a much better,
or at least a equivalent job of obtaining competitive pricing.
And you pay for an FTE with this single contract alone.
Now to my question, chief, AI, we jumped from a modest amount.
We were paying this company to a million dollars for AI, and I noticed under their contract
ethical AI development axon shelf, follow its responsible innovation framework, engage
with the ethics and equity advisory council EEC for feedback.
I'm reading through this contract, this AI is going to interpret your call.
What is this going to do?
So this axon is the parent company of all of our camera systems, our bodyware cameras, our in-car cameras.
This particular product is called Draft 1.
It is going to pull the data off of the interactions we have and then create a narrative.
So it's going to should reduce a significant amount of report writing time.
The officer will still have to go in authenticate it and clean up the report, but it'll create the substance from the interaction
that they have on each of their calls for service, we spend a significant amount of time in report writing.
The belief is we could shave as much as 75% out of the time we spend in report writing that then could put more FTEs back into the department if you will.
Well, in the event that this doesn't work as advertised, you've built in contingencies, protections to the taxpayer that we can get out of it.
Or have you seen this in action and you know it to work?
Yeah, I've seen it in action and I've seen some some tests that agencies have done with the product
Very satisfied with the results that they got we have consulted with the district county attorney's office to ensure that
They're going to accept the reports based on the AI generated material
So far everything we've heard is very positive about the product. Thank you very much to you. Thank you, Mayor
What just I wish we could negotiate these contracts instead of yeah
Now I'll just add real quickly on this one chief may have mentioned it a little bit but
This is the same contracts in the limit to the same contract that we have for all of our body one cameras
Everything that's out fit in the tasers and everything the actual contracts about eight million dollar contracts
So including the hardware yeah
Thank you, and as I recall this was a
It's not a service level adjustment. It wasn't right. I was gonna point out this was when we discussed in the budget one of the additions service level adjustments for the
PD this was no this is the contract that fulfills that service level, right? It was already in the budget. Thank you
Numbers X 13 presentation discussion
Possible action. This must be for let me get over to the other side
car. Yeah, there you go
Presentation discussion possible action regarding ordinance
amending chapter 38 traffic of vehicles and it goes through I will bother to list at a whole series of streets
which they will be no parking any time, or parking here to corner signs put in place.
So if that's good enough reading, I think you can ask your question.
Thank you very much, Mayor.
Thank you for everything you do for the city.
Relative to this, this is separate and distinct from the larger city wide, or potentially city wide,
or eat a south side Eastgate parking discussions we've been having correct.
I just want you to clarify for the record, it's burned us in the past where we did these, it has me anyway, where I just thought everybody had been reached out to and talked to and cleared with, and I did reach out to the developers of the two neighborhoods where all these streets are, but my question is, and like y'all say, they are copacetic with it like you say in your report.
But were the citizens engaged relative to all of this parking that we're about to remove from the streets?
No, sir they weren't, these actually came in with the final plat whenever they were the developers in the plating stage.
So the signs are already out there, they exist, they just weren't on our parking schedule in the UDO.
So this will codify them and have them in our parking schedule.
So it was part of the original plan.
Yes, sir.
So there were no houses built at the time.
This is following a standard procedure, right?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mayor.
Okay, that's the last item that I have had inquiries about, so I will move to the council. There, I'd like to separate issue on half engineering police, sir. Item 6.2. Okay, I'll have a motion and consent agenda item 6.1 through 6.17 except for 6.2. Motion to approve. Move your approve.
I didn't hear. Move to approve. And second from Mr. Smith.
Okay.
Okay. All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We'll go back to item 6.2 that has been pulled for a separate vote.
Mayor, we've heard a discussion. Do I hear a motion on that one?
Mayor, I'd like to move to approve the list as assembled by staff with the caveat that we remove half engineering
until our dispute with that engineering firm has resolved.
Do I hear a second?
Second.
I hear a second.
Okay.
Do I speak to your motion any further or not?
No, sir.
I'll speak to your second.
I have a question.
Is half an associate's already involved in contracts with the city?
So removing them or them being on this would not affect any existing contracts.
it would only, IDIQ, for those who don't know is basically a list of pre-qualified folks
that if we do certain small jobs, depending on what they fall, then we can utilize.
So if they were not on this, it wouldn't affect if they were doing anything else,
or if they wanted to put in for any other future individual projects.
It only affects anything we would give to people on this list moving forward.
Thank you. You've answered my question. Any further questions, comments?
I'd like to ask a link if there's any issue with us in that.
I mean, it's up to Council to make the decision.
No, I just wondered if there were any legal caveats we needed to consider as part of that decision.
I think staff looked at the criteria and based the criteria on their past performances,
but it's up to Council to approve the list.
So I think Council can do that.
Have we had any movement whatsoever on that interaction with them with the geotechnical boring?
We're not posted to talk about that specifically now, but we are in discussions.
It's germane to the topic at hand.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
As I understand the motion, it is to prove the list except for the inclusion of half
associates in whatever categories are incorrect.
Copy that.
Yes, sir.
Mayor.
Okay.
That's your second, right?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
All those in favor of the motion, say, by raising your hand and saying aye.
Okay,
we move on to that takes care of the consent agenda we'll move on to the workshop
agenda which is two items item 7.1 will be presented by Mr. Cook presentation discussion
possible after regarding the tourism strategic plan.
Thank you.
Jeremiah Cook, Assistant Director of Tourism, and we're excited tonight to bring the pillars
of the Tourism Strategic Plan, and so this is something that we began working on, had a
contract approved last fall, and we've been working through it with our steering committee,
which is the Tourism Committee laid out by the Council.
And tonight, what we're bringing forward is the pillars for that plan.
So this is not official plan adoption.
This is just the check-in to say, are we good with the six pillars that we're working on?
And do we want to continue to flesh those out?
So that's what we're looking for tonight.
Dan Finton, which LL will be kind of leading the discussion here.
And then we have two committee members also here with us, our chair, Courtney Phillips,
and committee member Hunter Goodwin, that can also provide comments.
We can also answer any questions at the end.
With that, I'll turn the presentation over to Dan.
Thank you.
Welcome, sir.
Thanks, Jeremiah, Mayor, Council.
I'm happy to be here.
I look forward to going through this with you.
I'm going to test the clicker.
Okay, there we go.
A couple of things.
Great to have our committee members here with us because I think it's representative of the process that we've gone through.
And we're going to talk about some of the priorities that have come from our process.
But I think it's important to state that the collaboration that went in
getting us here was very broad and significant and there's been a lot of great input and we'll
talk about that as we go through this and so we certainly want to thank the members of
the committee and a lot of members of the community who have now been involved with this process.
Also some key members from Texas A&M who have been a part of the interaction that will
leads to some of the things that you're going to hear today.
This is just a little bit about us, just the fact that GLL, this part of GLL, works really
across the nation when it comes to tourism strategic planning, destination planning, so
this is a little bit about us.
These are the three members of the team that are on here.
This is just a little overview of, if you think about how you go through a strategic planning
process, the listening phase, trying to analyze the data that you gather thinking about what
the strategies are.
And then one of the things to Jeremiah's comment is we're going to come back, and you're
going to see a little bit of this today, but assuming the council says we sort of like
this direction, the next meeting when it comes to activate is, okay, how are you actually
going to specifically make sure that these things come to life and that we will be successful
in terms of our implementation.
Couple of things here just to look at.
You can see that we have spent with a lot of different stakeholders really listen carefully
to people's thoughts about where the priorities should be, and when you think about tourism,
we want to make sure that we are thinking about priorities that will in fact generate
a combination of things, but surely the economic side of tourism, that they will generate
increased visitation, they'll generate an opportunity to continue to evolve both as a destination,
and you'll see in a second also as a collaborative partner, if you will, in terms of how we
rule about what we're doing. These are three or four different specific
analysis that we did and a couple of ones I want to point out for today's
conversation. One is the event matrix which we're going to talk about and the
whole notion of how can we think about leisure events going forward and the
right one very significant for today is University Benchmarking Research. So I've
had a lot of great conversations again with Texas A&M and you're going to see in
the second how that has manifested itself into some of the priorities that have surfaced
that we want to discuss today.
So we'll jump right into proposed strategies.
One of the things that came out of the discussion with the committee, if you think about it,
would be a natural part of a tourism plan to think about the integration and the collaboration
with Texas A&M.
So if you think about that seems like a fairly standard and very obvious important part of
this process. And I will tell you one of the things that we did as a team is we met
with, for example, Provost Office admissions, athletics, recruitment. We met with a lot
of different parts of the university just to think about where could tourism efforts support
some of the key initiatives within the university. And you'll see the first one that we've listed
here, and that was partially came from a conversation with the Provost Office, is we talked about
how we could, from a tourism perspective, become a key strategic burden when it comes
to attracting and bringing academic conferences to college station.
What we did is we talked a lot about, with a strategy like this, it's not so much just let's
go find conferences and try to bring them here, but how do you create a strategy that aligns
with the University itself so that it also supports the University's mission and brings
conferences to College Station and to Texas A&M.
If you look at the left hand side, we won't necessarily go through each one of these, but
you can see that we have thought about with the committee, we thought about specific tactics
and specific things to go about creating the ability to be that kind of collaborator that
we're proposing here.
So you hear, you see this first one about inventorying and thinking about where the opportunities are.
We had an interesting meeting with the hotel general managers.
And one of the general managers was talking about this notion of how we can collaborate.
He sort of looks at everybody and he says, if you think about the size of the faculty, so 4,000 plus members.
And if you think about the fact that faculty members have, you know, have all sorts of tentacles and connections
to associations or different sort of industry, if you will.
Agreements, you can see this note here that he speculated
that there's probably over 10,000 meetings that exist
where you could see a connection back to some
of the spectacular things that are going on
at the university.
So you sort of step back and you think yourself,
there's actually a pretty big universe here
that we could be thinking about together in terms
of how we collaborate on bringing some of that
If you will, business to college station and you'll also notice that we've talked about
here and the committee is really very committed to this because this is not a situation where
what we're recommending is let's just make sure we're sort of good partners as we are today.
But in this initiative we're recommending a significant investment here in rethinking
our current setup and it comes to structure, members of our team, how we bring certain
expertise to this initiative so we can really partner and produce opportunities in this
that we work very closely with the University on so you can see here some of the different
things that we've talked about in terms of creating a new team, creating people that are
bringing people on who are really well versed in sort of that whole notice of business development.
You'll also notice here that there is a key part of this that says making sure there
There is really alignment here in terms of how we approach this initiative.
So this particular piece of the priorities that you see is a big one that the committee
has put a lot of time and effort on and really support the fact that we need to think about
how do we invest in this new direction with resources to try to really make a difference
in terms of how we can strategize on conferences.
And again, remember that this is not just conferences for conferences sake.
This is conferences that align with the university's mission, with the department's mission as part of ultimately the sort of successful initiative.
So this is one of the key areas within the sort of university portion of our recommendations that we wanted to talk about.
If you look at the next one here, a little bit more on the initiatives related to bringing in the conferences so you can sort of look through these,
that you can again see this whole commitment to going out, finding, qualifying business
and really creating that relationship when it comes to how to bring some of those conferences
to college station.
The next one that was talked about is also still ties to the relationship, the proactive
strategy with Texas A&M was its overall event management partnership.
So we listen carefully to a lot of stakeholders and a lot of people both at the university
and others that said, how do we align ourselves when it comes to bringing more of some of these
larger events to college stations, slash and conjunction with the university?
So, you can see here what we're proposing is, again, dedicating resources, so bringing resources
to the table, bringing a strategic partner in how we go out and recruit some of the new
larger events in conjunction with the university, and then, again, having measurable goals.
for how many of these we want to see take place on an annual basis, and how can we use our
collective resources to sort of join forces when it comes to bringing some of the large
events to Coge Station. Next one here, if you look at, oops, I'm sorry, go right away. Next
one here you'll look at is, this will kind of go through quickly, but in conversations we
had when it came to recruitment. So we talked to the recruiters at the university, and they
I mentioned to us that here's an interesting statistic,
which generally probably knows,
but for someone, this was an eye-opener in a good way,
they said they conduct almost 2,500 tours
on a weekly basis when it comes to people looking at
Texas A&M as a potential university.
And one of the things the recruiters said to us,
as they said, we would love to see the tourism team
work with us on improving that experience.
So how do we actually work together
on looking at that recruitment experience and adding more to it as a way to help
us when it comes to how we engage and how we attract students both to
university and obviously to college station. So you'll see here specific tactics
related to how we want to invest in enhancing the student experience or that
experience that goes on today and if you look at the next slide you'll see sort of
of law of that in terms of the different opportunities,
but after we rose drawn to where the emissions offices,
we could really get a sense of this sort of excitement
when we started talking about what the possibilities were.
And one of the things that Jeremiah said is,
he goes, if you think about this historically,
you know, we would provide information
and then we'll sort of stop there.
And we're here for questions.
This strategy is, let's really look at
what that itinerary looks like for those families,
how we make sure that they have the experience when they're here,
understand what goes on in college station, understand the whole picture,
and you can see some of the key partners here that we've listed that would be part of this,
and then how do we really partner on enhancing
what that experience is from where it is today.
The other thing that came up also in the recruitment area
As we were, as we were strategizing with the recruitment leadership, we then moved to the level of bringing new faculty or bringing new staff into the university. Same thing. How can we enhance that experience when it comes to where recruiting new faculty members or recruiting senior staff levels? And you can see here again, we've come up with ideas in terms of how to really make sure that that sort of itinerary when new faculty or new senior staff are being
recruited, how can we support those efforts, a lot of interest from this university side
and how we can partner with this going forward.
Again, you can see more of this, customizing itineraries, doing things with the provost
office you can see here, so a lot of thought has gone into this particular interface with
the university.
This one here talks about joint marketing strategy, so how do we collaborate with the university
in terms of our collective messaging and what are things that we can do together in that
area so you can see some of the opportunities there.
If you go to this strategy, so those that we just went through were this collection of
thoughts that the tourism committee feels strongly about, that we need to invest in going forward
in terms of how we enhance and strategically enhance our collaboration when it comes to
Texas A&M and how we do that and really can measure results going forward which we'll
talk about.
The last one is if you remember I talked about this event in Matrix, so we studied 50 to
a hundred different events that currently go on in college days, so we looked at them objectively,
we looked at what the potential was and we said to ourselves how do we take collective
of tourism resources and really become a proactive player
in future event development for college station.
So instead of necessarily perhaps being a sponsor
of an event or making sure that an event was on a calendar,
how do we get further into the event development area
as a tourism team?
A lot of interest in this from sort of the broader community,
a lot of ideas here.
So what we're proposing here or what we want to work
Laura on is coming back to the council and saying this is specifically what that structure
would look like.
And here's how we would measure success when it comes to new event development, looking
at things that are going on today, and saying how can we enhance them going forward.
And we think this is one area that certainly has a relationship also with the university,
but it also has the ability to really look at events that will draw from a regional
audience and that will bring people in from that distance to come in and experience college
stations through the events that we want to work on developing or creating new events.
And so that's the sort of last pillar that we want to talk about that we think is an
important one has implications that are certainly tied to in Texas A&M but also broader in
terms of some of the areas that we think can be impacted through this initiative.
So, and then the other part of this is as we do this, are there opportunities to develop
new signature events going forward and what might that look like and how do we use current
tourism resources to be able to invest in that area?
So, just to summarize, and then I'll turn it back as perfect, I think we're going to, I hope we can,
ask our two committee leaders to come up here and just say a couple of words to everybody.
But I want to go through just to recap, these are the six initiatives that Jeremiah was
referring to.
So this notion of how we partner on academic conferences, how we work together on the
larger events, this idea of how we can enhance the recruitment relationship, both with students
as well as faculty and staff, how we can join forces on marketing communication, and then
and lastly, this whole idea of continuing to build
on current and future leisure events going forward.
So mayor, councilor, I'll stop there.
That was a overview of where we are.
And I think as Jeremiah mentioned, we'd love to get your support
to sort of keep moving on these initiatives.
But let me stop and turn it over.
Courtney, maybe you can start here
to two of our great committee members
who have been a part of this.
Thank you.
Ms. Courtney Phillips, who's Chairman of the Tours and Adviser Committee.
Yes, thank you, Mayor.
Thank you, Council.
I just wanted to reiterate kind of what Dan said.
The committee is behind these pillars.
We've worked many hours.
We've had many conversations, and these were created with, you know, the joint communication.
The other thing is that we feel very strongly that we are in a position
in time where we need to be more proactive with our tourism, we need to invest so that
we're driving the ship a little bit more than we ever have before.
And that's going to mean it's a hundred feet, talk better than I can so I'll turn it
over.
Thank you, Mr. Goodman.
Thank you, Council Mayor.
I think I was set up by Dan.
He picked the prettiest version of our committee and the ugliest one to follow.
so I apologize. Just to echo what Courtney said, I think there was a lot of effort and time spent in developing these pillars.
What jumps out at you that's kind of stating the obvious is that for us to be successful, we have to have direct integration into Texas A&M.
For 25 years, as long as I've been around here trying to do this, that's been a real challenge.
So what would strike some optimism and hope?
maybe I'm just stubborn, but I think a couple things that I think really present a unique
opportunity for us to actually finally maybe knock the walls down that exists between
the city and the university.
One is Playfly, a new multi-media rights partner that is going to come in effective July
1st of next year.
They are very cutting edge, very different, their approach is different.
I think Texas A&M, the University at large, is up for a big change on how things are
done and run over there, especially with athletics.
Two, the Applin Center and three, H-M-G-T. There's a great correlation now with our efforts
in College of Ag, the former very prestigious department with Dr. Schaefer used to run,
R-P-T-S.
has now, I call it RPTS 2.0, we've shifted our focus more into the hospitality and restaurant
management space. With that, we've seen a tremendous interest and enrollment. Undergraduate
enrollment was kind of on a downward trend. We've turned and now it's funny, Dr. Compton
was concerned about how we're going to handle the growth. So that integrates well into what's
It's going to be the front door of really the campus, which is the Appland Center.
Beaver Appland was generous enough to give a largest single donation to Texas A&M $60 million.
And he's building what will become the Visitor Center of the front door to Texas A&M and
what I call the HLOT right across from the Texas A&M Hotel Conference Center.
And lastly, I'll say that last week we had a meeting last Friday that was held at a, I guess, adjunct campus.
This might be the appropriate term, it will be a Texas A&M campus, not a system school
that's being built right now in Fort Worth, downtown Fort Worth.
The site of the old, what's now the Texas A&M law school, I believe it was less lenin'
law school years ago.
The purpose of that meeting was really how are we going to integrate programming done at
HMGT with some of the efforts in the DFW marketplace.
I will say that that meeting was really eye-opening for me.
There were probably 75 very influential players in the room.
John Goff, who runs Crescent Realty, was the chairman of that.
It was integrated with some other efforts within the city of Fort Worth,
and really gives us a chance to do some unique and wonderful things
with partnering with our partners in Fort Worth.
So the ask, as Dan said, is we would hope you would continue to allow us to pursue this.
I think we're at a point now where the hard part is forthcoming.
We have to develop a plan on how to do this.
But I am very encouraged that I think for the first time ever, for those of you that
attended the George Strait concert last year, followed by the friendly soccer match.
We saw the potentiality of this community, we saw what it could do, and I think we proved
to the world that we're capable of some really amazing things.
So we would just continue to ask you to allow us to pursue this and work to the most important part, which is the how to thank you.
Thank you very much. Dan, come back for a second or I think there's some questions I got to and I think probably at least one of them for Dan.
Great. One of the overriding issues I've been involved in these things for years is our lack of air airport connectivity.
How does that fit in with this?
How do you deal with that as you think about attracting academic conferences and so forth?
The things the university is being encouraged to look at?
Yeah, no question that part of the outcomes should be to continue to support new flight development,
absolutely part of the bigger development area.
And I don't want to, as an outsider, I had a chance to experience this.
we had a couple of conversations, for example, with some of the leaders in the agriculture
department and others.
And we really believe in, we had a conversation today about some of the different areas
of Texas A&M that are really globally known, I mean, this is a situation where we are doing
things that people want to be a part of.
And we think that if we can bring what Hunter is talking about, Jeremiah talked about too,
is if we can bring a level of support to that effort, that we can attract conferences to
come, because if you think about it, the key here is that alignment with the university.
It's aligning with some of the great things that we do, so that's got to be the driver.
So yes, we want to work on new flight development, but we clearly think we've got a lot of unique
opportunities within the university to create things that people are going to want to come
to.
on my second second question would just be related to you you talked about new
investment and that may be something that would come out of the next stage
yeah but I think the council and staff would be very concerned or interested
interested in concern both in terms of a fiscal impact and fiscal requirements
for that investment not that I can't yield you know 200% return or whatever but
The upfront money is always a question.
Yeah, I think that thing, I think Hunter mentioned this one of the things the committee and he really said this so the committee was very focused on in this process was for us not to get up here and say, wouldn't it be great if right, but to really look at what would it take to do this right, what kind of infrastructure, what kind of expertise, all the things that would go into this and I think mayor, you're you're hitting on another point to and that is we have to have metrics here.
So what we don't want to do is come back with something that would be great if we did this and here's the expenditure, but what are the goals?
And I think we want to come back as Hunter mentioned and be able to present all of that to you and the council.
Thank you, other questions for Dan or for Jeremiah? Mr. White first.
Thank you so much. It's super exciting to see this initiative getting underway.
I love the partnership with A&M. I think that's going to be huge. I'm going to be association
guy. You all mentioned a little bit about bringing association business and conferences
into this. I mean, we're in the perfect location. We've talked about it. That Texas triangle.
Do we have the, you can call it infrastructure. Do we have the meeting space available to
bring in I'm more familiar with the association side in the academic you know
meetings but do we have areas in the city that we can do a hundred exhibit hall
hundred booth exhibit hall so I think a couple of things this is it's like I'm
I'm not deferring the answer here but I think to point about the actual
implementation we need to come back with that inventory we have had meetings with
some of the leadership and Texas A&M about that, about the space there and where there
are opportunities. We think there are opportunities. But two, whether it's hotel partners or
other venue partners. If you think about a sales process, we want to make sure that we can
arm the sales leaders with that ability to say this is how we're going to do it. I will say this,
and I know I'm stating the obvious when it comes to the hotel community, but there's a lot of
interest in trying to figure out just what you said. So what exactly is that model. And the
other thing I just want to say, and I remember peat myself over a few times, but the
linchpin here is that is that marriage between the exciting things going on at the university
and how it ties to that conference. And that's really the key to this, I think, successfully.
And I think when you start thinking about it that way, we have a lot to talk about, you know,
and we have a lot to differentiate ourselves with.
And we have a lot of opportunity.
And we have a lot of ROI that could come out of that.
And just a lot of great, because we've got to just
to meet a lot of the even academic leaders
in this process.
And I know that we've got to keep moving.
But we can talk for all that opportunities there.
We think it's fun.
And as you mentioned, some of those university faculty
or presidents or chairman of the board
of their association, and that's where we get that association,
but that will kind of compound it.
Thank you so much.
And to Hunter's point, just very quickly, the idea is that we can go to that leader, that academic leader and say we really have a plan, not just sort of theoretical support, but we're really going to support you on how that how that gets executed. I think mayor, that's what we want to come back. That's a resource piece that we want to come back and talk about.
Thank you very much. Mr. Nancy, did you have a question?
Yes, thank you, Mayor.
Dan, thanks for the presentation.
A little bit disappointing on your rubber meets the road slide that those things aren't happening already.
And all the time that our entities have co-existed.
And I guess my ultimate point is, if we don't.
It's obvious this city wants to engage. We hired Jones Langley Sal, and we're looking at it, and we're trying to amp up our tourism. But it takes two to tango, right? We're going to ultimately need Texas A&M University or the systems support. What was your feedback in your engagements with folks? From the do or level to the administrator level? What give us your science?
Let's talk, let's start with the dual level a little bit, right?
We do think there's going to be opportunities in this next phase to, I'm going to use
a word in power and maybe direct, in another phase, on how we do partner together when it
comes to the point you're making, I think is, is we need to have a strategy, it was kind
of earlier talked about council member about space and fluidity and how do we book and how
do we make sure that we have a competitive process.
A lot of receptivity there, but one of our steps, and even Hunter could come back and talk about this, but one of our steps that you'll see in here, is really getting this organized and going to the administration, you know, going to the university administration with an organized plan here.
So not necessarily just sitting around and talking about this in theory, and we believe that with there, when they see that the city, so obviously this would take council support, is really committed to engaging here.
in a proactive way and supporting in a very proactive way.
What we're hoping is that helps what you're talking about in terms of saying how do we,
you know, how do we really make sure that we're locked and loaded, if you will.
So from a sample of conversations are all positive, but that's still at the surface level.
So they're doing what they do. We're doing what we do, and there's this space in the middle where
we're collaborating. I've seen, we've seen many of those cross this bias that we've supported
and what not. Are your performance metrics when you get there and start defining them,
going to be creating a positive delta of more things that are in their silo or hours
or that space of cooperation in the middle, you're trying to create more events.
That's correct. And we're trying to be able to do it through targeted and effective resources.
Yeah, and final note, in traffic, it takes longer to get from O'Hare to McCormick Center than it does to push to here.
So I don't really see, you know, and if we're successful at this, those additional flight
itineraries, it'll come, but anyway, thank you very much for what you're doing.
Right.
Thank you.
Other questions, Mr. Wright?
Sure. So I have a question regarding number six. So the pillar six pillar leisure event strategy.
Yep. You know, right now we have we have some things that are being talked about plan multi-events
center early phases of just discussion on it. We have our RFP out for folks that want to use Wolfpin
differently, which is I'm sure you're familiar with. Is part of this study, especially the data
driven part, going to be like a min max? I do believe there is a point where because the market's kind
of barren right now that we could very quickly over saturate it with events.
Yep. Well, that'd be a recommendation that minimum you should probably be doing this
number of events and probably don't go over 200 knots a year or something like that.
Let me say yes, but I want to put yes and quotes there because I think there's a, um, there's
a min-max part of that and then there's also the point of what events do we want to have.
Sure.
And I think that part of what we're advocating for here is to be able to come back and
say this is really how we're going to assess events when it comes to are they the right
event and so it's both number and right and the other thing is putting resources and time
into really collaborating but very much in depth with the vendor organizers because this is more
the key thing here is this is more than just saying we're going to sponsor events. This is saying we're
going to get involved with trying to figure out which ones I think Councilmember are going to have
the most impact. So it really should be both, both midmax or should probably be a calendar
that we all look at together and see this is what we're trying to do. But again, are
they the right events? And it's not just about selling and promising. It's about servicing
the events while they're here, which is one of the things that I think our tourism group
has really built to try to do with certain sectors are already working, but it's servicing
them while they're here is another key point because you want them. Absolutely, absolutely.
Miss McLean. Sorry, I bolted during your presentation, a little emergency at the house.
But anyway, as I'm looking through these, we've got five of the six are very heavily sex
as an am centric and granted, I mean, they are right across the street and they are big
and they would be a phenomenal partner and just about any venture. Are we missing any opportunities
that aren't necessarily captured in this leisure event strategy?
Are we putting all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak?
Yeah, I think the way I would characterize that is that the breadth within the leisure event strategy is really significant.
So that I think sometimes people tend to think of that as that like two or four events and that's it or what is that.
We really and the committee was very focused on a myriad of opportunities there.
And part of the reason to think about this at this stage is when it comes to new brick
and mortar.
So let's talk about a new attraction or a new this.
Notice we haven't talked about that here because we do want to make sure that one of the
outcomes of this plan that the council can see now is we're trying to come up with recommendations
that we know we can move on.
But you're pulling about longer term, could there be strategies in terms of asset development?
We'll come back and talk more about that.
We really wanted to sort of focus on these today, but it's a good point.
Okay, I see no other hands raised. As I
Jeremiah, once you come back up and
You're
I think you're getting a pretty positive response from the group up here, but I don't know how
How what form you want that response in? Yeah, if if the council is approving of these six being the pillars that council wants to move forward
which is positivity that we're hearing,
then we'll move forward with bringing
the action items back in the true plan
of a form in the future.
I guess my only reservation
would be exactly what Ms. McLean
just raised and that is there's a big world out there
that doesn't all depend on university.
I think it'd probably be the low hanging fruit
is right there, have it been 44 years working
in the faculty of Texas A&M.
I've often wondered why we don't have
more interaction and more attraction for that. So I would hope that if you want to call
the six pillars, that number six is much broader than the other five. And that probably
doesn't need to be forgotten for sure. I think that's sort of.
And I would not say they are equal in extent or equal like it is not like number two is
going to take the same amount of time as number one or number three. That would be more
fully fleshed out in the. I guess the word pillars maybe is what makes me
think that you're talking about equal structural pillars and only one of them
deals with anything outside the university so Mr. Mr. White has a chance in
this field. Thank you so much for making all this up. This is don't read in between
this. Does the city of Brian have a tourism strategic plan? I would guess so.
You think so? I think so? Yes, I'm not a I'm not a.
Are you familiar? Did they look at? Did the committee look at that plan if they have it?
Not that. We want to do. I just know it's curious if our
sister city has a strategic plan to bring in visitors.
The organization is called destination by. I'm not sure I think does have pretty clear strategy.
you anyway, I don't know how it's embedded, but it's certainly, certainly somewhere out
of be looking at.
Yeah, I would agree.
And I think what I would say about that is that we have two different organizations
going after two different things, right?
And I understand.
And so I think that that's the conversation, is that there's places we collaborate, places
that we go on our own.
Our staff is extremely meetings focused, as you see through these lines, which is something
that maybe they focus a little bit less on.
And so the excitement of this is that this would be the first strategic plan under visit
College Station. And so this would be our first true strategic plan just for tourism.
Very exciting. Thank you. Okay. I don't think I'm overstepping my bounds by saying that
the sound seems to me that you have a good committee to work with, obviously, and they seem to be
excited about what this project and planning activities brought to them. And if they're excited
about it then we will be excited about it for sure because they are an important committee that
represents the council in the city and in these endeavors. So is there any objection to
endorsing where they are and telling them to go forward?
Is the nodding of heads and if that's good enough for you then we will move on. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Item 7.2 on our workshop agenda. Thank you for making the presentation. Dan and
committee members appreciate you being here.
Item 7.2, presentation, discussion, possible
action, Texas NM, off campus student services presentation. Barbara Moore is going to introduce
this and the participants. Welcome.
Welcome.
Leave New Mary Council, Barbara Moore University and Community Relations Manager, and this evening
we have with us Assistant Director Jacqueline of Shaw Brown and Community Lays on Nicky
McDaniel to talk about some of the activities of the off-campus student services office.
As many of y'all know, the office was reestablished in 2023 by the end-general Brigadier Joseph
Ramirez, and now it is headed by Dr. William Kibler, and the group will talk tonight about some
with their activities, some of the ways we've partnered and some of the things you can
see from them going forward.
Thank you.
Welcome to the podium and we look forward to your update and recall you have been here before
and thank you for coming back.
Howdy.
Well, thank you for inviting us up to provide a quick update.
And reduce yourselves again for us.
Absolutely.
I'm Jacqueline Upshot-Brown.
I'm an assistant director and student life and I oversee our off-campus student services team.
And I'm Nikki McDaniel. I'm the community liaison for off-campus student services.
Okay. All right. So, oh, I guess we're going to let Nikki start it off and just let you know a little bit about where we are situated in our department.
Okay. So off-campus student services is situated within student life. We work to learn and to teach our students the holistic method
it as to how to get along, how to work throughout the campus.
So we work with different ones, so we work with student assistance services for basic
needs and support.
We partner with SMVP, which is Substance Misuse Violence Prevention, and that's for party
smart programming.
We also work with NSFP, which is the new student and family programs, and that's to deliver
information to families and students and we also connect the students with our
student attorney and for legal advice.
What we do, so in a nutshell, our
department exists to provide education, outreach and support to our students to
help them succeed. Throughout this presentation we'll share different updates
about off-campus student services and how and what we've done over the past year.
Alright, in the area of educational programs, some highlights for you, the first thing is we had a pretty, I guess, an increase in presence in our new student orientation that all incoming students undergo this past summer.
So it's a two-part orientation process, and for several years we've had some content
about off-campus living in the mandatory online orientation that students complete prior
to coming to campus for their new student conference.
So we continue that. It provides information about living off-campus,
about local city ordinances, how to be a good neighbor.
But this year for the first time, we were asked to create an interactive 45-minute
presentation that all students had in person when they came for their new student conferences.
So we reinforced that information about living off campus, but we also asked them to engage
in some practice when it came to how would you handle common challenges with your neighbors,
with your roommates, with your landlord. How do you be a good neighbor within the community
of Brian College Station. And I think they had a great time. It was successful and they
learned a lot based on what we're seeing with them coming into the office and following
up on that throughout the semester afterward. We've also enhanced our efforts to provide
some information related to safety and security for the students living off campus. So that's
everything ranging from fire prevention awareness, their personal safety, home security,
things to keep in mind if they're traveling away from their college
station home during holidays and breaks and so forth and that's come in the
form of printed materials that we provide at different occasions and also
digital content and then when it comes to online engagement of course very
important with our students of today so our departmental social media accounts are
used to share a lot of information that's helpful for students last week they
They were quizzing students on the rules of the road when you're writing a scooter or
a bike around town and providing some clarification for the students who may have been a smidge
off base on some of those things.
But it's fun to watch kind of the educational content and the engagement that they get
with the students in an approachable way for our population.
We have also conducted some virtual leasing workshops.
Both targeted to students and also some families of incoming students who might be a little overwhelmed by the prospect of choosing housing for their students for the following year. And we've contributed some parent and family articles to a platform managed by our new student family programs office that provide information again for families that they need to know in supporting their off campus students. So that platform's called campus ESP.
And they have 120,000 family members with accounts.
They shared earlier this week that they have an open rate
of 75,000 people who read this monthly newsletter
that comes out.
So when we have information to share with family members,
it's a really good way to reach them.
And we have recently been going through the process of launching
a special off-campus family's community within that platform
so that we can be a little bit more strategic and targeted and sharing that information with parents and families.
Okay, so our outreach.
Of course, the city has graciously helped us host the carnival.
Our carnival, we had 1,500 attendees.
We also had truly positive feedback from our students showing and telling us that they enjoyed everything from the food,
to the resources, the local resources, different things like that.
We also hosted a party smart watch party, which was an away game,
and we hosted an alcohol free environment.
We had partners from City Code Enforcement, UPD University Police Department,
UHS University Health Services.
And we also had Texas agriculture life bring their driving simulator.
so that was a huge success also.
We would like to give a special thanks also to the city.
We collaborated together on what we called the Hall
and Health donation drive.
This was our first year doing it.
We had a passion.
The city, they did not want a lot of newly nice use equipment
and different furniture going to the land fields.
In turn, we wanted the students to give something back
to Bryant College Station and both passions were truly achieved we were able to bless and
help numerous families. The students were able to do that and we were also blessed to not have
a lot of items go back into the landfill. We've had community lunchens where we put together the
local residents and our students in a room and a round table setting to help us just come together,
give positive feedback towards each other,
uplift each other, meet in greets,
and we've also hosted numerous presentations
with our Aggie Moms Club and other groups around Texas A&M.
All right, and then finally on the support piece,
a little bit to share with you
about our individual consultation.
So this is a student is having some sort of issue
reaches out to the department and is connected with us
for off-campus housing support.
We saw over 120 student cases for last academic year, which was our second year of existence,
but looking at the numbers from summer of 2025, there was a 200 percent increase in those
consultations over the summer, and I have to credit those new student conference presentations
for a lot of that and making students more aware that we're there to support them.
We, of course, do not have our final numbers for fall of 25, but it has felt very busy,
so I'll be curious to see what that looks like.
When we receive those consultations, issues addressed or anything ranging from a landlord
or maintenance issue to I'm having a roommate conflict, we are all trained mediators, so
we can help address some of those things, housing search assistance, pretty broad variety
of questions that we do receive and a lot of times we can point them in the right direction
but we'll also connect them with additional resources whether that is basic need support
or legal advice any of our campus or community partners who might be able to help them out.
I also wanted to share a little bit about our good neighbor network. I know we talked about that
about six months ago and we did have our application cycle for the current academic year. We've got
30 properties who applied this year, which is about a 50% increase over last year.
So I feel but good about that growth. We did bring on board some properties in different
parts of town and different price points, which I think is good to offer a variety of properties
within that network. And I have to say there haven't been a lot of issues with our good name for
network properties, but we haven't been able to bring about an expedited resolution of some maintenance
issues where you know unfortunately sometimes we'd find it was August and
everyone had just moved in and someone's maintenance request was buried in a
pile of 1200 and the manager just hadn't become aware of it yet. Maybe there
was a slow response but by having those open lines of communication we were able
to get things moving a little quicker or you know I'm having an issue with my
roommates and it's just not going to work so maybe we can get people moved into
of different units to help out with that. But again, not a lot of issues. It's gone very smoothly.
And then finally, I wanted to share a little bit about what our department is calling
micro-engagement. So we've come to recognize that a big blowout event is not always the best way
to connect with students. Sometimes a small-scale program where they're able to connect more one-on-one
with staff members and other students is very meaningful to our students who are overwhelmed
in this large environment often. So we've been hosting a variety of these programs whether
it's inviting them into the student life center to do an activity or meet others who have similar
interests or going out to the apartment communities to put up a table and answer questions they may have
about living off campus wherever they are. To just hop in on a golf cart with some goody bags
and going around and introducing ourselves, maybe asking them a question that will help
us understand more about our students' needs. But we have been connecting with a lot more
students one-on-one in that way this semester. And with that, those are the highlights of
what we wanted to provide, but we are definitely open to answer any questions you may have for
us.
I got one or two and then we'll see if others have.
So back to the previous slide, the Good Neighbor Network
as you know, intersects tremendously
with some concerns that we've had.
And we're pleased, no, at least I am pleased
to know that you've introduced that effort,
50% increase over last year.
Well, that's just a start-up kind of thing.
30 properties represents how many beds or bedrooms.
I don't have a total number of beds.
I could get it just haven't added that some of them are pretty large.
Well, I'm comparing that with what I hear is something like 40 or 45,000 students that
live off campus in the city of College Station.
Right.
And certainly.
And Brian as well, because you cover some of those properties in Brian.
That's for sure.
Yes.
My question is, do you have a goal?
Are you pushing that to try to get that to 60, 80, 100 properties?
I don't have a real idea.
obviously the apartment association is involved in the somehow at least you
work with them because many of these properties are members of that we've had
some help from them sharing the opportunity I don't have a set number that's a
goal honestly the more collaborative and communicative we can be with
local properties that I think the better it'll be so we did make some efforts to
hit the the streets with some flyers and share with some properties again
and that may not always identify as student housing,
but we still have a lot of students living everywhere.
So yeah, we're working on it.
I guess one metric would be how much,
you, how many inquiries you get prior
to people signing contracts,
particularly among freshmen coming from elsewhere
that actually look at that list and use your list
as it's intended to kind of share with families
in potentially prospective students, these are properties that you can count on, at least with
a scarred to the list of ethical practices that they will consider, or will provide.
Commit, yes.
And so do you have much, do you have a count on how many times you that part of the website
gets hit?
Again, I'm afraid I do not, but I could probably work with our vendor that hosts the website
I think it would be anything you can do, and I know working with Barbara, she gets these
same kinds of concerns and questions from us, and more you can do to enhance and promote
that good neighbor network is certainly, I think, beneficial to the entire community citizens
as well as the renters.
Thank you.
Other questions?
Do I see any, Mr. White?
Yes, thank you so much. Very informative. Glad that we're doing the outreach and it sounds like it's very very positive.
A couple of things that I want to bring. I see that you actually do a kind of engagement with code officers.
Yes. How did that go? I thought I think that's fascinating to work with some code officers. That well received?
Sure. I mean, we, the way that it works is we pick a day. We're actually doing one next week
in a neighborhood that has been nominated by our code enforcement partners. And we put together
some bags of information around, again, local ordinances as well as just some good neighbor party smart
practices that, again, our code enforcement people believe the residents of that neighborhood
could benefit from receiving. And so we put together a team. I think we have paired up one
or two university staff members with a code officer or two and walked through that neighborhood
and knocked on doors and greet the students and just provide a friendly face and say, hey,
we're providing some information. And I think the students have been very friendly and appreciative
of the outreach. I think it's a great program. Thank you. One last one last thought and
and I wanted to compliment you again. It sounds like your newsletter outreach 75,000 to the
family and to the to the students is outstanding. Do y'all put any there about see it click it from
the city? Do y'all do any promotion on that program that the city has? Yes, we have been sharing about
see-click fix in presentations that we do are leasing presentations as well as content
for how do we handle an issue with a property. We do try to include that.
Thank you all for your work very good. Thank you.
I'll start with you and then we'll go to Ms. Chansey.
Thank you, Mayor. So it might be interesting to see you guys cross-post with our city of
website, our Facebook, social media, all the places, and I for one would be very excited
to see the rules of the road that you're sharing with students because I'm not really
sure what those rules are and drop through the text as Walton, New Main Intersection a
couple of times a day and I feel very uninformed and I don't know that I am playing by the
same rules as those on scooters and bikes, and unicycles, and all the things.
You are not alone in your confusion, I am afraid.
I'm glad to know that.
Mr. Hatsy?
Thanks for the presentation.
On your health-related violence prevention, suicide prevention, substance abuse, counseling,
pregnancy outreach, and assistance.
Are you guys working with the county health department?
And I'm just wondering, are you
provide a health district at all?
Because they have a lot of resources,
license counselors,
they can even provision some health
care services that are reduced or
are at no cost.
And I'm just wondering, are you
facilitating that connection,
that resource?
Yes, so we have invited them to
functions. I believe they were at
the carnival to provide information.
Those specific areas are not necessarily
within our direct wheelhouse.
Those are areas where we do connect students
to our partners in university health services
and substance use and violence prevention.
So there may be more partnership going on there
than I am aware of, but we have had a presence for a while.
Okay, I saw that in your slide.
You're saying you hand those off to a university resource
and there may be collaboration between the county.
There may be more than I am aware of, yes.
Great.
Thank you very much.
I think that the same thing probably goes for the minors in possession education program,
which I think our municipal judge has long been involved in training education for young
people that are cited for minor in possession.
and I think in the last year he has worked to make that become part of what you put,
not in the other off-campus student, but in the alcohol awareness group, is that correct?
Yes, he's worked very closely with Dr. Lauren Dorsett, who oversees that substance abuse violence prevention team
to streamline those processes and kind of collaborate,
make sure that they're rowing in the same direction, not duplicating efforts
so that they can meet that need more effectively.
Yeah, I think they have a regular class of some kind, correct?
Yes, the alcohol education workshop.
Thank you both for your update and presentation. We thank you for doing that. I think there's a lot more to be done, but you are pointing in the right direction. We work certainly with Barbara Moore and, and, uh,
her staff to try to keep up to date on up as good to have you here as well thank you so much good
thank you anything further barber from you I should have brought you back up here before they
left that's okay tatlin just reminded me a little while ago that they are also our partners
along with the president's office of community engagement to bring the 2026 international town
and gown conference here to College Station May 19th through 22nd of 2026 so we're super excited
about that Dr. Schaefer went this year it was at Ken State University in Kent Ohio and we are
super excited to welcome people from around the country and around the National as well here
to College Station to learn more about town and gown operations so they've been great partners with
us along with the president's office for community engagement and we're looking forward to bringing
that conference here next year.
Thank you very much for reminding me of that.
We're definitely supporting that program.
Okay, that takes care of our workshop agenda.
We'll now move to the regular agenda,
which many of you were here to learn about,
and to participate in.
Item 8.1 is a public hearing presentation
discussion and possible action regarding an ordinance.
Amending Appendix A UDO Article 4 is owning district section 4.2 official zoning map of the code of ordinance to City of Cal State and Texas by changing the zoning district boundary from our rural to GS General Suburban for approximately 237.65 acres generally located on Greensbury Road east of the intersection of Greensbury Road and WS Phillips Parkway, Ms. Maceus is the staff.
of responsible person will make her presentation first and then we will hear from our PNZ representative, and then we'll go to the open meeting.
Good evening mayor, city council, Robin Macias, planning and development services.
Tomorrow's request is to rezone approximately 237 acres from our rule to GS General Suburban.
This thought is one of the last remaining large acres of undeveloped property that is within
the city limits.
It is a long green sparing road and adjacent to a residential subdivision that is in
the ETJ and a green sparing reserve subdivision.
This property is designated as suburban residential on the conference of plan future land use
map.
Suburban residential is primarily single-family residential areas that consist of low-to-moderate
density single-family lots, development types tend to be consistent with a subdivision
of a neighborhood. The intent is to accommodate sidewalks and lighting, encourage community
facilities, parkways, and greenways within the neighborhoods and to provide pedestrian and
vehicular connectivity to adjacent developments. About 47% of the city is designated as Suburban
residential on the conference of plan.
Like I mentioned earlier, the request tonight is to reason the property from our rural to
GS General Suburban.
Other subdivisions in this area that are zoned General Suburban are Cassellgate 2 and Bruster
Point.
Cassellgate and Creek Meadows are zoned PDD with a base of General Suburban.
And Green Spring Reserve is zoned PDD with a base of restricted Suburban, but does have modifications
locations to allow for areas with a minimum amount area of 4,600 square feet, and other areas to allow for townhome developments with a minimum amount area of 3,450 square feet.
This item was heard at the September 18th planning and zoning commission meeting where they voted against the proposal.
This item was originally scheduled for the October 9th city council meeting, but the applicant did decide to pull that item from that meeting in order to host to.
two public meetings. Each one had about 15 attendees. The majority of concerns that
we heard were regarding the maximum allowable density and the potential builder. So while
the maximum allowable density is 8 units per acre in general suburban, it isn't attainable
given the requirements for infrastructure drainage, parkland, and streets. The city has
As reviewed, this reasoning request against the criteria in the UDO in recommends approval.
I am available for questions and the applicant is as well and they do have a presentation.
Okay.
Any questions for staff before we get to the applicant's presentation?
I want the presentation from the applicant before the PNZ person.
and prepare the chairman will speak after that,
but before the public, the list of 22 members
and I have signed up to speak,
any questions for staff?
Okay, then I guess we would like the applicant
to come forward and make their presentation.
And then I see Jason Cornelius, chairman of our PNZ
back in the back and he will be available
for any question you might have, or just simply tell us how they got to their recommendation.
Good evening, my name's Adam Kurt, some with DR Horton.
Addresses 736, Southern Point Parkway.
We are submitting the rezoning requests so that we can move forward with the development that will be our flagship community in the college station market.
The community will have a large well-landscape and impressive entrance monument and will provide community amenities such as a pool,
playgrounds, parks, and walking trails. The entrance, the pool, and the playground will
be constructed in the first phase of the development, and the walking trails will be constructed
as each phase is developed. We have experienced developing a master plan community, and we'll
add to the value of the area, and given that we will be building and selling in this community
for approximately ten years, we have a vested interest in making sure this is a successful
community.
That being said, after going through the planning and zoning board meeting, it was
apparent some of the nearby residents have some concerns about the development proposed
on the property. In order to get a better understanding of the resident's concerns, we
held two community meetings at our office. In the first community meeting, we showed the
concept plan that we were proposing for the community, along with the future land use plan,
future thoroughfare plan, drainage area maps and traffic maps.
We received feedback from a number of the residents that attended and the consistent themes
of the feedback were that the adjacent residents would like some separation or step down density
between their lots and the lots we're proposing.
The residents were concerned about the connectivity between the communities.
The residents had concerns about the building materials on the homes and the residents
We're concerned about traffic on Green's Prairie Road.
We took the feedback from the residents and we worked with our planners to mitigate the
concerns as best as possible and scheduled a second community meeting to present some
possible solutions.
At the second community meeting, to help with concerns from the adjacent property owners,
we presented two different options.
I believe we have exhibits of those, I don't know if they can pull them up, but we're
We're going to pull them up on here.
One of them option A, which I believe they're pulling up now, is, yes, this is option A,
a little hard to see on here, I might want to zoom in just a little bit.
But we're proposing for all of the lots that are bordering the sweet water community and
the lots that are bordering the Greensboro Reserve community.
We're proposing a 20-foot setback or 20-foot buffer between the edge of that property and the back of our lots that would back up to their property.
And additionally, we also offered to do RS zoning for the lots that back up to that buffer.
That was the first option that gives a little bit of separation.
and it would also create a limit to where there's no structure is going to be within 60 feet
of the outer property line of our proposed development.
We would also have privacy-concing at the rear property line of all of our lots.
Now option B is the other option if you don't mind pulling that one up.
And in this option, I might need to zoom in a little bit on this one as well.
We proposed a 50 foot linear park bordering sweet water and also any of the lots in greens
prairie reserve where the lot width is larger than 50 feet which is the majority of the greens
Preserve Border, the only area of the Greens Prairie Reserve proposed development, future
development.
It's a little closer to Greens Prairie Road.
And based on the information we've seen that appears they have 50 foot lots that back
up directly to our property line.
We would not have the 50 foot linear park there, but we would have it for the other border
to Greens Prairie Reserve.
And additionally, I guess any lots backing up to that 50-foot linear park were offering
to put a minimum lots width of 60 feet, and we will have privacy fencing that backs
up to that linear park as well, trying to create as much separation as we can.
And with this scenario, there's actually 75 feet from the outer property line of our property to the nearest structure that would be developed on the property.
We're really okay with either option.
Some of the feedback that we have gotten is that
So we will be required to perform a traffic study to offset the impact from the additional traffic, according to the traffic impact study per code, and we will be required to mitigate the impact as required by the code. This is a valid concern that the residents have, but the city has all the codes in place to help make sure that this is properly handled.
In addition to the, in addition to the previously mentioned efforts we have made to address the resident's concerns, it is important to note that the city of causation commission to housing study titled
College Station Housing Action Plan, which was produced in 2024.
The report states 69% of workers commute from outside the city limits in college
station, which is a pretty staggering number, which I know is not a surprise to you all.
45% of the workers live outside of the county.
All of these workers are still coming into the city every day and contributing to the traffic
and the city, but they're spending their income on housing and consumer goods outside
of areas that produce tax revenue to improve the infrastructure within the city.
By 2030, it has estimated the report in the report that the City of College Station will
be short 4,200 units.
By 2030, our proposed development only makes up about 5 to 10 percent of that shortage.
The report produced a consistent theme.
The theme is to create and incentivize more housing units and more diverse housing types
by creating a proposal for two strategies.
strategies. The first strategy is allow and encourage increased density, with the action
items being amend the UDO to allow for greater density and housing variety, rezone areas
to allow for increased density, create a process for expediting permitting or reducing fees
for affordable housing. The second strategy is encourage and allow
infill development, with the action item being explore opportunities for infill development
when amending the UDO, or rezoning for greater density.
In closing, we believe that our proposed rezoning is in line with the five rezoning criteria items to be evaluated for the rezoning request,
which are whether the proposal is consistent with the comprehensive plan, it is consistent with the comprehensive land use plan,
the comprehensive thoroughfare plan, and the housing action plan, which we're all commissioned and approved by the City of College Station.
Whether the usage number two would be whether the uses of permitted by the proposed zoning
district will be appropriate in the context of the surrounding areas.
We are requesting GS zoning with a cap of 880 single-family lots, which is a gross
density of 3.7 lots per acre.
This is in line with the combined density of Castlegate 1, Castlegate 2, Creek Meadows, Castle
Rock, and Greensperry Reserve, which combined equal 3,600 lots in the immediate area around
the development and result in a density of 3.7 loss per acre.
Number three would be whether the property to be rezoned is physically suitable for the
proposed zoning district.
The property is out of the flood zone and does not have wetlands and is physically located
in a residential area, so it is physically suitable for the proposed zoning.
Number four, whether there is available water, wastewater, storm water, and transportation
facilities generally suitable and adequate for the use is permitted by the proposed zoning
district. All necessary for facilities are in the area and available for use by the proposed district.
Number five, the marketability of the property. Given the success of the surrounding communities
being developed for single-family residential, it is clear that single-family residential is
marketable for this property. With all of that being said, there are a number of people here tonight
who are in support of our proposal, and I'd like to ask them to stand up for a few minutes.
all
of these people are college station residents and they all want this
development to happen. In the interest of saving time most of them will not
speak tonight, though some may still choose to do so. It is important for the
council to know there are people here in favor providing this type of housing
community. We thank you for the opportunity to present tonight and ask for your
approval of this rezoning request. Thank you now. Why don't you just stay there if
If you're not, unless you have somebody else coming forward, but there may be some questions from council.
I'm going to show you that, right?
Notty.
About?
I don't think you mentioned your presentation, but what price range are you shooting for for the homes you want to put out here?
We're estimating our price range to be somewhere between 350 and 600,000.
And that is, you know, I would not, nothing against that at all, I would not say that's
obtainable housing or affordable housing by that definition at least.
It sounds like you're putting a product on the ground that is offered by any other
neighborhood in typical of this zoning, this density.
So I just kind of want to put that immediately out there that $600,000 would not, I think, qualify
in that range.
That what that I would not call that obtainable housing, which is what a lot of emails have said that it's affordable housing obtainable housing.
I wouldn't that's I'm not saying anything negative about your product particularly.
I'm just saying that that is not anywhere in the realm of what I would consider obtainable or affordable housing.
I think by comparison, the report also says that the average sales price in college station is around $444,000.
So having a starting sales price of $350,000 by comparison to the average is more affordable.
But VMW is cheap compared to a rail's Rolls-Royce, right?
But there's still both expensive sports gloves, so, okay, thank you.
Mr. Wright?
Thank you, and let me first applaud you for pulling this down earlier and having those two public hearings.
We really appreciate that, that's great to give the community.
Let me just jump to kind of some of the questions that I think a lot of individuals that I received
emails from are curious.
I think density is going to be a big discussion.
Can you do what you want to do with residential suburban?
No, I don't believe we can do that enough.
And why is that?
Tell me why because it seems like the parameters that you just mentioned would fit under that
So the resident, the RS zoning requires an average lot size of 10,000 square feet with a minimum width of, I believe, 70.
Now you can go lower, but for every lower, you can go down to, I think, a 6,000 square foot lot, but for every 6,000 square foot lot, you do, you have to offset that with a 14,000 square foot lot.
that, because the average has to be 10,000 square feet.
And so I think that a case study that we could use to analyze that would be Green's
Prairie Reserve next door.
And originally, that property was RS, the complete, that was RS now.
They built some beautiful homes in there as it's a great looking community.
I think that, you know, the future part was probably changed to PDD with some 50 foot lots
and mixture of lots in it for the reason that the RS zoning was too restrictive on the lot size
and you're really limiting your buyer pool when you go into there and additionally we see from
a lot of buyers is that a lot of buyers these days don't want a really large yard. They want the
common areas that are maintained by the HOA. They want the shared pool. They want that so that they
They have it when they want it, but they don't have the day-to-day obligation to take care of their yard and spend all weekend mo in the grass and doing a lot of those things.
And just people's daily life these days takes so much time, when they get home, they want to enjoy it, they want to enjoy.
They want to have enough space like we're going to provide to be able to barbecue in their backyard and hang out, have a dog, have all that kind of thing.
But they don't want to spend all weekend taking care of the yard.
No, I don't understand that.
I love your concept.
I think you described it very well.
But what are all the options, housing options that a residential suburban can offer versus
a general suburban?
I mean, this is the request that's for a general suburban, and you're talking about restricted.
Okay.
No,
yes. Restrictions
on some of the housing for general suburban. What are the
restrictions?
What are the, what are the, what are the, what are the, what I'm basically trying to get at is there's probably some housing that general suburban would allow you to build, even though you're not going to build them, but just that zoning would allow you to build some housing that maybe would not be what the community wanted in that area.
Yeah, I mean, is that a concern?
I know you presented where you're not going to do those mobile homes, maybe be one of them.
Is that a possibility?
Mobile homes are not a possibility, but I'm saying, but in general suburban, that is one of the homes that is listed as general suburban.
Is that correct?
Maybe the question is sure of the staff.
Yeah, I don't want to be, but I'm not sure of it.
So for a general suburban zoning district, the product type that is allowed is a detached
single family home.
A manufactured home is not allowed within the general servant zoning district.
Thank you.
What was the one last question, what was the concern of the PNZ committee when you presented
this to them?
What was their concern about denying this request?
I believe that they asked a question of what is the minimum lot size that's allowable
in our ass zoning and the answer to that question I think was 6,000 square feet which is technically
a true and correct answer but the additional facts that it left out what I mentioned earlier
of the average has to be 10,000 square feet.
And so if we do a 6,000 square foot lot, we have to do a 14,000 square foot lot to offset it.
Which significantly drives up the cost of the land and the cost of the house subsequently.
Thank you.
I'll wait for it.
Okay.
Mr. Schaefer has a question?
Yeah, just to dig a little bit deeper into the restricted suburban.
I appreciate what you said about a lot of people would like to have, you know, small
yards and more, maybe common spaces, parks, as we sometimes think about them.
And there is an option too, which is cluster development, which reduces that lot size to
an average minimum of 8,000 and 6,500 minimum, absolute minimum.
Have you all looked or thought about that?
I still think on an average basis that's still, you know, as the goal of the study that
But the call station did, we're trying to get houses down to an affordable level here.
And as we're mentioning already with what we're proposing, we're going to be getting
to that $350,000 starting point.
If we go on a larger lot, there's no way we're going to be able to meet that.
Right.
One of the other concerns I think that was brought up by the Planning Commission was sort
of context, which, you know, and that is indicated in the Comprehensive Plan, too.
And you alluded to that, and that's, so that's what I think we're hearing from some
of the neighbors, this is the idea of context and how you all blend, and the cluster development
might be an option to blend a little bit better.
Although I appreciate what you all have gone through.
So thanks.
Other questions for the applicant,
Mr. Smith?
Yes.
Thank you.
We're considering a rezoning request tonight and you've shown some alternative layouts that you propose in response to inputs you've gotten from the surrounding residents.
Okay, does the rezoning commit you the applicant to any particular layout as that is this is approval of the rezoning does that stick this layout on to that property?
So I believe we can, and staff can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we can request the rezoning approval with the stipulation that we do this 50, we agree to do this 50 foot linear park along the border of the Greens Prairie Reserve and Sweetwater.
And with a couple of those other stipulations I had mentioned, of porcides masonry, for any
of the houses that back up to those two neighborhoods,
I believe we can add those stipulations
exactly.
So, I'm going to lead off while other people are thinking about this.
There are physical stipulations you can make for things like the green belt.
I don't know that you can do anything related to the masonry or some of those types of things.
Yeah, so you can do a condition, Anthony Armstrong planned a long service as director.
You can do a condition that's something physical to the land, something like, yeah, you could
say there needs to be a 50-foot strip around X. You can give limitations to that to some
degree, but it would be something related to what is a zoning requirement in the UDO.
So you could do a number of different things with that. In Texas, we actually can't regulate
building materials, so that wouldn't be an option. But you could do something like the buffer.
Now, this exact layout verbatim, you would not be able to condition that, but you could condition the aspects of it that you're trying to preserve.
You could even, going back to the other option that was thrown up here, you could condition that areas be zoned to RS, for instance, as was shown, you could do that because that would be a zoned into the request, so that would be permissible as well.
Is that help?
Yes, it does, thank you.
You know, while you're there, this is going to be a question for staff as well.
He talked about his offer, the applicant's offer of Plan A, Plan B to address some of
the concerns and neighbors.
One of the, I think, was Plan A actually specified that certain detached single family homes
would be laid out like this map shows and he indicated it would be restricted suburban.
Well, that's not the application.
So the application clearly states it's general suburban. I don't know that we can do that. So you actually can. So the way that it works when we advertise for a zoning request, if a zoning is less restricted or trying to make that, do that work right. So GS would be a more dense product. If you went to a lesser dense product with RS, that would be allowable because of what we advertise as we advertise as GS, which is, which is more intense zoning district, you could go down.
So same thing, how do we advertise for a general commercial property?
You could have zoned it to suburban commercial at that same meeting without going back to the drawing board.
And so that's what I was saying with the condition.
You could condition, and this is hopeful for at least from a record standpoint.
We could say that those, the areas shown whatever, and we would write that into the ordinance that eventually the mayor you would sign.
We would have an ordinance in exhibit.
They'd have to go back to some work, draw it up, but it would be pretty clear enough that we could do that.
But because that is a, okay.
So that could be a condition?
Correct.
Or what?
How would we do it?
Yeah, so you would be, you would recommend a motion for approval with the condition that
they follow the RS designation as shown here with the condition that they have the 50-foot
strip of landscape that they have, whatever that is, so again at that point, I can come back
up here and help walk you through that.
But it would be something that's a physical attribute and we would walk through what that looks like.
Okay, thank you. I wanted to clarify whether we could even consider that.
You can. Yeah, whether that was just we would like to do that and it doesn't really tie them down.
Okay, thank you for the mayor while Anthony's there. Can I ask him a quick question?
Yeah, please.
The late Tony Jones, God rest his soul, his development at the corner of Burd,
state of Rotprey Road, Waterford Heights, was that a PDD?
It was not a straight zoning.
They had come back with a PDD on the front side for a commercial section, but it was,
excuse me, the original was a straight zoning.
The back half they did a PDD for a small section, similar concept here.
They could have accomplished it the same way as this is being proposed, but that back, that
The very back section was a PDD.
Our HOA, I personally worked with Tony too, but I couldn't remember how he effectuated
where it was adjacent to my neighborhood.
That portion you were saying was a PDD?
Correct.
The last block basically, the surrounding last end, it was in addition, it was really
phase two, phase two came in and that was a PDD section.
Thank you, sir.
which is a question is why would you have not considered the PDD if in fact this was where you really wanted to make sure people understood where you're going to put things so they're actually more comfortable.
We actually did consider the PDD and after working through that for a few months with staff we kind of got to the position of what we're really requesting is GS anyway
and it would just be simpler to request the G.S. zoning.
So, and the G.S. zoning is completely in line with future land use plans, so we went forward with that route.
Okay, thank you. Any other questions?
Okay, I think I will call on Mr. Cornies.
The question came up as to the consideration that planning and zoning, Mr. Cornies, is chairman planning zoning.
They've given us their recommendation, Mr. Cornelius.
You want to encapsulate that a little bit for us and answer any questions we might have?
Evening, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Jason Cornelius, Chairman, planning his own commission.
And as Mr. Messier said, we did hear this back in September.
The commission's major concerns were over density and transportation.
Some of those concerns have been mentioned on the days today as far as I don't,
and Mr. Armstrong can help correct me on this.
I know that we talked about the total number, but I don't know if that was presented as a cap, as to how many units could be in the property.
And then we also had questions about transportation and asking Mr. Schubert whether TIA was considered, and it did not include the intersection of Greenspray and
Errington, so it did not go that far down.
And so that added to some of our concerns, which caused us to vote it down.
I have a question, Mr. White.
Thank you.
Did the committee look at, or were they presented the two different options that we were shown tonight, or was it just a pure?
It was the original presentation and all both of those, I guess, public meetings that the applicant had were after our meeting.
So we were not presented either option.
So, the committee has not actually looked at these proposals.
The new proposals that were presented tonight, no sir, they were not presented to the commission at the time again,
those two, the public meetings that the applicant had were after our commission meeting.
So, density and traffic were the big issues that P and Z had based off this G.S.
Yes sir.
I understand that there was based on the five criteria item two compatibility.
Yes sir, compatibility and again, and I believe it was Councilman White that talked about
the after the zoning request what would be allowed after that and so that was a large
concern of ours if we did the rezoning as is what would be what would be able to stop the
additional density.
Thank
you.
Any other questions for Mr. Cornel?
Yes.
Mr. Nancy.
Thank you, Mayor Nichols.
Chairman Cornelius, your leadership on PNZ is not gone without notice.
I want to thank you for everything that you do.
Thank you, sir.
This was a split vote.
Is that right?
No, sir.
It was unanimous.
Yes, sir.
I watched a video.
I didn't remember the exact vote count.
Was it a hotly contested issue?
There was a lot of discussion both from the public hearing and then amongst the commissioners ourselves as to a lot of questions to staff, a lot of questions to the applicant.
We did ask the applicant, again, what was preventing the applicant from going with restrictor suburban and he basically gave the same answer he gave and they didn't think it would work based on what they were planning on doing.
Again, our concern was, if we grant you general suburban, what is going to stop the lot limits, especially hearing the concern from the public other evening.
That was my next question.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you, sir.
I guess there are no other questions for Mr. Cleans.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate you being here and sharing your thoughts with us.
Okay, I have a list of 23 names, I believe, who would sign up to speak, and I'm going to
go with them as I have them on my list, so if you'll bear with me and keep your comments
to three minutes, I will say if you heard other people particularly as you get deeper into
this, other people have said basically the same thing you're going to say on either side
of the issue whatever it is then you just simply come up indicate that and don't use
all three minutes your time we'll we'll get through that but with 23 people and that's
a good hour over an hour probably. So I will start with the Mr. Robert C. Todd who will
be followed by Perry Barbosa. Mr. Todd.
Robert Charles Todd 16736 would like drive
Oh, the microphone will roll closer, there you go.
Okay, Robert Triost had 16736 wood lake drive.
I point out that I live in the extraterritorial jurisdiction
in Imbracell's county.
We join the sweet water area a little further down on wood lake drive.
Our greatest concern is that
is really the impact of this overall change in density.
The inadequate, frankly inadequate transportation studies which tend to ignore all the current
construction going on and some of the major intersections where the real bottlenecks
will occur was not adequately done as emitted by staff.
So that left us with that concern.
The second is the drainage studies get done later on.
And unfortunately, everything kind of just dumps at the county line.
Where it moves into our lake that we try to keep in a decent aquatic condition.
Increasing development around has led to a marked decrease in the water quality and
sedimentation that we deal with.
So, and then the final thing is, much has happened at the planning zoning commission.
And once a, what is the actual protection to the citizens?
Once a zoning has been made, that the number of houses presented in conceptual ideas and things is presented now.
And while they're very well done, applaud their effort to reach out to people.
But once that is made, General Suburban, the chance for a high density there,
We're probably now onto our under Greensboro Road and limited connections to other areas, as well as the drainage makes me question why not protect all the adjoining residences with something like the restrictive suburban that we're guarantee that at some point we didn't end up with too many homes in there.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Mr. Perry, Marabosa, be followed by Leighne Crabbs.
Good evening. I live in the Sweetwater area and I've lived there for 10 years and we have
enjoyed the neighbouring properties and the wildlife and one of the things that we fully
understood was that these properties with the increasing number of people in
color station would eventually be developed. So we knew this was coming. One of
the things that we are concerned about is that the loss of safety and integrity
to our properties with any of these developments. And so a very high density
development on the borders of the sweet water has two big issues for us.
One, as Zorri even mentioned, the issue of I use of roads.
The connection to Whelk-Mippe-Welk will actually impair our ability to do the roads.
I walk and my wife walk the roads every day with our dogs.
And so we are quite well aware of the community that we live in.
Now, we know that that road, which has got no sidewalks and it's drained by
ditches, is pretty vulnerable to high-density traffic. In fact, when they were
fixing or developing the median on green spree, a few trucks did some turnarounds
in our front and pretty much ripped up the road and that took about a couple months
to fix. So our road is vulnerable to high traffic and so that needs to be a
address whatever the zoning is in this area.
If you connect it to our property,
you will damage our roads and you will affect our use
to those roads and the safety of that.
So I ask you to consider that.
Secondly, as the previous baker mentioned,
the drainage system is a concern.
The, all the drainage, the surface water drains into a set
a creeks that is at the southeast corner of sweet water.
Those currently already flood and affect about five properties.
So if the drainage is not properly done, then those properties become even more vulnerable.
So I ask you to consider zoning at the lowest density possible, which is restricted suburban.
Thank you.
Lynn Crabbs will be followed by Neil Horginson.
Good evening.
Yes.
Lynn Crabbs, Pebble Creek, South College Station.
I've prepared a few slides.
I'll go through them quickly.
Anything I wanted to point out is just that the supply and demand of housing in this area
is that we're under supplied and at almost every price level, particularly the median price
level, real quick point on the median price that was brought up earlier.
Keep in mind that what pulls that down is older houses.
If you look at houses under 300,000, for example, in this area, the median age is 20 years or more.
So we're talking about new homes here and so that price point is reasonable.
Texas price distribution has shifted significantly since 2019 to the right,
meaning higher price tombs, the brown bars are 2019 price levels,
and 2024 is in blue, and you can see that that's shifted greatly.
That's Texas, Brian College Stationary, even with high interest rates, the median price has not come down.
And this is just over the past three years.
Housing and affordability index across Texas is abysmal.
And it's even worse in Brasius County.
Brasius County's housing affordability is lower than the state's housing price index.
So we have less affordable, and when I say affordable housing, I'm talking about all housing in general.
I'm not supplying demand of homes at various price levels, particularly that, and
believe or not, interest rates are not the biggest reason for this.
It's actually because of the next slide, which is the home price, well, this is the,
that says, home price index.
This is, yeah, I think we got mixed up here on the slides, but what this is actually meant
to represent is that the price itself, the median price of homes in this area has skyrocketed,
particularly since 2021. A big reason for that was extremely low interest rates
in 2020 and 21 as you can imagine. Even though rates have been steady now for a
couple of years, meeting home price
This has continued to decline, and that's mainly in my opinion. And I should mention, obviously I'm speaking as private citizen, but I am a research economist at the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center. So this is something I look into all the time. And my biggest concern for our community is the lack of housing and particularly housing, like in that $350,000 to $500,000 range, we have, don't have enough of that. And as you mentioned earlier, this is the last track, I believe, of this size, to have the
It could make a real impact.
And kind of the point I want to make around this is, as a professor from American University,
once said, the widespread distribution of private property ownership is the cornerstone
of American liberty.
Without it, neither our free enterprise system nor our Republican form of government could
endure long.
It's so important to provide housing that new families, young families, can afford and just
Just to put a point on that, the median age of first-time home buyers in America is now
40 years old.
And so we need to provide more housing.
And I appreciate the concerns about density.
But I think that there has to be, that has to obviously fit in the market.
This is going to bring in a lot of property tax revenue that will address some of the issues
in regards to roads and drainage and-
Thank you, sir.
Neil Horginson will be followed by Colleen Deeb.
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak.
I'm Neil Hoganson, 4035, still far as the sweet water.
I wanted to just have some concerns about safety of the cut through to Whipperville,
which was discussed previously, and I just want to say a couple things about Whipperville
as a street.
It's about 30 years old, it's a asphalt, it's about 30 feet wide, it's used by pedestrians
day in night, people walking their dog riding bicycles, and I think a cut through through
The subdivision with 30 homes or so to a development with 800 would create a safety issue for all those people using it day and night and there are no streetlights at night.
And it's pitch black out there. Thank you.
Thank you very much sir. Colleen Deidd be followed by Lloyd Davis.
Thank you. Nice seeing you. Thank you guys so much for reaching out to me after and talking to me.
some of you, but definitely sending emails. I really appreciate it. My name is
Colleen Dave. I live in Greensbury and myself and then two other sets of
neighbors went around to Greensbury and we came this the neighborhood. When we
did that, we got to see, I want to say probably 90% of people face to face.
There's not one person that said that they were for this, not one.
I don't know who these people are that are standing, but they don't live in this neighborhood.
In fact, I bet they don't live in a jointy neighborhood maybe, but we haven't met them.
We got to see, we went to the whole neighborhood.
So anyways, besides that, I wanted to talk about compatibility and
And it's not comparable or compatible with our neighborhood.
When we bought into Greensbury, we wanted to have,
and actually just read this, we had, we wanted,
our family decided that we wanted to have,
be in this neighborhood, we wanted to live out the rest of our years.
My husband and I are both over 65.
We wanted to just live out our years in peace,
And I understand that there's going to be development.
But I'm hoping that you guys decide to vote for a neighborhood that is comparable and compatible to ours.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Dean.
Lloyd Davis, I'll be followed by a Democratic job.
Lloyd Davis, speaking on behalf of the College Station Association of Neighborhoods.
First of all, we believe that CCAM believes that home ownerships, the most effective foundation for family's stability remains a single best way to build generational wealth, positively impacting future generations.
And with that said, we strongly urge the council tonight to continue to work with residents and find in a compromise that delays the fears of nearby neighborhoods
It still allows for a small but significant number of attainably priced homes to be built.
Please note what C-Sans now use in the term attainable homes and not affordable housing.
Affordable is to paraphrase in the wallet of the beholder.
Housing is too close to warehousing.
These are homes, they're for families, they're for members of the community who contribute daily to our well-being,
in who are friends, families, and neighbors.
Attainable homes and collegeization are critically scarce,
impacting our city now and requiring dramatic progress
to prevent future worsening of the issue.
The disparities compounded by a low rate of owner
occupied homes, which stands at about 35%
with rentals making up the remaining 65%.
Consequences of this issue, I include
school growth teachers not being able to live in our community.
College Station has been a school district student population has been fairly
stagnant over the last several years and you can evidence that by the district's
recent decision to allow students from other districts who've been
beginning attending classes here. We have workforce shortages. We hear that from
A&M. We hear that from the city. All of this is in large part due to
our housing shortage, workforce shortage,
hamper facility, the city's ability
to bring in new employers as evidenced
by the ever growing share property tax revenue
that falls upon residents.
If it rose the quality of life, it inhibits our ability
to retain even a reasonable proportion or portion
of the thousands of very bright young college graduates
past our community by way of their earning A&M's degrees,
each and every year. All indications are that while our population of older residents is increasing,
our population of non-student younger residents is decreasing. In private conversations with a
subset of planning and zoning committee, we believe that at least some members felt that
compromise could be reached. We ask you to explore what those compromises might be. We ask that you are
elected leaders personally help steal this effort in hopes of finding a solution.
We believe that if successful, the long-term benefits will lead to lasting results for
our community and outweigh the hard work now.
This is particularly true for first-time home buyers looking to establish roots in our-
Thank you Mr. Doos appreciate your being here.
Mr. Karatek Ja, I fellow by Dloris, Kymchuk Ram, Graham.
Welcome.
How do you may air and council members?
My name is Karatek Ja, and I am a resident in Prince Prairie Reserve in Calestation.
I wish to provide my comments against the proposed rezoning of the Wynnum Ranch land parcel
to General Suburban instead of Restrictor Suburban for the fallen reasons.
reason 1, economic concerns and tax burden. While new housing brings additional tax revenue,
condensed housing generally produces less property tax per acre compared to the cost of infrastructure
and services of demands. This development will primarily benefit the developer while the community
absorbs the cost in reduced property values and higher service demands. If the property becomes
high-density housing, it is almost impossible for all the cars to exit to clean spray
road during the rush hour. So, we will have more cars cutting through to diamond back
via olem oaks. That much traffic will make cycling a walking much more dangerous, which
turns this traffic issue into a safety issue. He is in two, property values and neighborhood
character. The scale and design of condensed housing is inconsistent with the existing
character of nearby communities like Green Sparrow Reserve, Castlegate, Sweetwater, Nantaket
and Indian Lakes.
It wrote in the sense of place and cohesion that residents have invested in.
Reasoning for high-ben city housing for up to 8 homes per acre directly adjacent to established
neighborhoods like Green Sparrow Reserve threatens to reduce property values and destabilize
the housing market.
No neighborhood in the area has anywhere near the level of housing density.
Co-roads, abundant green space, nature preservation, larger lots and walking trails are characteristics
of the surrounding neighborhoods.
A general suburban zoning will not be able to maintain the level of integrity that these
surrounding neighborhoods currently have.
Season 3, strain on infrastructure, additional and disproportionate impoverished services
will contribute to stormwater runoff, flooding risks and erosion problems.
expanding utility capacity, water, sewer, power would require costly upgrades which ultimately fall on the city and taxpayers without the tax benefits.
Reason 4, schools and public services, CSI's do not have any additional land available in the near vicinity of this area to accommodate such a disproportionate increase in student intake.
emergency services such as police, fire and EMS will be further strain, potentially increasing
response times and reducing effectiveness.
In prison, it is remarkable, but not surprising, that the PNZ Commission voted against the
rezoning proposal unanimously.
I appreciate your thoughtful consideration and action, which will impact the present and
future of all residents, their kids and families in and around our community.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, sir.
The Loris, Kim Check Graham, Graham, and then be followed by Nell Rubin.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak about an issue that's very important to me.
I've lived in Green's Prae Reserve for almost four years.
My address is 4805 Pearl River Court, and I'm opposed to this rezoning to GS.
The high density model of 8 units per acre is incompatible with my neighborhood, which
is 4 units per acre, with then tuck its sweet water and castle gate.
This type of housing invites investors who create rentals that really are not maintained.
I can drive through any neighborhood and I can point out the rentals.
I attended one of the public meetings hosted by DR Horton and I was kind of surprised because
As it was in a meeting, didn't have an agenda or presentations, we just walked around
and looked at posters and we asked the DR Horton representative's questions.
And this is from my notes from that meeting that I attended.
The high density model would result in four to five DR Horton homes backing up to one home
in Greensboro Reserve, that's not compatibility.
I ask about a buffer between Green's Prairie Reserve and the DR Horton Homes, and one
rep said 20 feet and one said 50 feet, so you can see it's evolving, so what is the
plan? I ask if DR Horton would preserve mature trees bordering the property, and they said
they would replant trees in accordance with city standards, city codes.
I as quiet the traffic study did not include the intersection of
Errington and Greensbury Road, which is a bottleneck several times per day.
And I was told that they didn't have to do a study at this time.
It could be done after the GS owning was approved.
And that's backwards.
Traffic's a major concern.
My home backs up to old emotes, old them oaks.
And I can tell you you should rename it Raceway.
Every morning, when I'm walking my dog, I watch school children trying to cross that road
to get to their school bus stop.
And these trucks just quiz by and that's going to get worse if you open that road into
high-density housing.
And I've talked with members of Council and the Zoning Commission one-on-one.
and I moved here because housing was affordable.
I'm retired.
My next door neighbors, a young family that used to live in Austin,
happened to be driving through College Station looking for a place to move they could work anywhere,
and they chose College Station because the housing was affordable.
A recent study by Forbes named College Station on the list of best places to retire.
They cited, quote, proud home of Texas A&M University, median home price 347,000, 14 percent
below the national median, cost of living 13 percent below the national average.
And if you ask me, our local builders have done a good job building affordable housing,
and they care about the reputation and the community, because...
Thank you very much. Next will be Nell Ruben, followed by Miriam Saleh. Nell Ruben and then
Miriam Saleh.
Good evening. Nell Ruben, I live in the Woodlake subdivision and I'm also here
to speak against this proposal because of density and traffic and also because we have experienced as
Charlie Todd mentioned earlier, severe water issues, flooding problems from neighboring
development to the extent that our lake recently developed a blue-green algae for the first
time because of...
Partly, I think because of the runoff from neighboring construction projects, but mostly I love living in South College station, even though we're not officially part of the incorporated, we're not incorporated. But I love living there partly because of the beautiful green spaces, because of somebody mentioned the wildlife, because you can breathe, because it's not high density. That's one of the reasons we moved there.
And to have another high density development in the area, as others have mentioned, I think
would really stress the resources that we have down there, including the roads which were
just worked on and the floodplain, or the flood resilience.
So I hope you will also consider that.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
All
right.
We'll come back.
Nancy Dickie is next.
We'll be followed by Matthew Glover.
Thank you for the opportunity to address the council's money.
It's Nancy Dickie and I live at 4040 Sweetwater in South College Station.
I appreciate the time the commitment it takes to provide governance and for listening to each
of us on this.
I too would request that you not allow the general suburban zoning, but restricted suburban
zoning for a number of reasons, and I'll try to be quick because you've heard most
of them.
First and foremost is one of safety.
We live in sweet water and a planned egress of several possible, several hundred possible
homes into a cul-de-sac in our very small neighborhood on narrow streets.
Unlit, no sidewalks would be dangerous for the people who live there, for the children
who are bicycling and playing along that area, and would, in fact, very quickly, destroy
the integrity of that road, it simply wasn't built for that kind of heavy traffic.
We also happened to empty out onto Green's Prairie in the very short segment that hasn't
been changed to four lanes that can become quite a bottleneck until and unless they get that
fix.
I'm concerned about the drainage issues that you've heard.
And then finally I think we have to continue to talk about compatibility.
The proposal is simply not consistent with the homes that are surrounding it in virtually
every direction.
Now you heard from the developers that they would do their best, but I have to say that if
If we give them general suburban zoning, then we really have no guarantees.
We have promises about what they say they'll do, but they are free under that zoning to do a variety of things,
most of which are not consistent with the neighborhood in which they want to build.
For all of those reasons and the others that you'll hear this evening,
I hope you'll restrict that to restricted suburban.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dickie.
Dr. Dickie.
Matthew Glover, be followed by Michael Bear.
Matthew Glover.
Oh, there he comes.
There we go.
Hey, I'll be doing.
I just wanted to speak on the builder that's coming to try to build these homes.
They're great local home builder.
I've done work for these guys for 12 years.
And, you know, I want a local plumber company.
and we actually employ 50 local guys that all do their work
and they really keep us employed, keep us going.
And I've always been a great local partnership.
All the guys are either local, former Aggies are both.
And they definitely have college stations best interest in their minds
in trying to build this town and keep it going.
and I know that we do have a lack of homes in that $300 to $600,000 range, and so yeah,
I appreciate you all. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have your address? I think
City Secretary would just repeat it for the record.
4,000 for a war week.
Intellectation?
Brian Texas.
Okay.
Michael Bear, followed by Susan McNeely.
Hi
there, good evening. My name is Michael Bear, and I live in Greensboro Reserve at 4822
Pearl River Court. You know, I think you've heard it said that it's always a good real estate
investment to buy the smallest cheapest house in the neighborhood, simply because the surrounding
properties tend to elevate the value of the one you purchased.
I think the same is true for subdivisions.
And the homeowners, developers and builders have already invested in these surrounding subdivisions,
including Greensprayery, based on the plans that the City Council has already approved.
being that area and wind of branch being restricted suburban.
And now, if that's changed, I'm sure Dear Horton and
Wyndham would get a pretty sweet deal.
But it would come at the expense of, I think,
of a negative impact to the property values
and the surrounding subdivisions.
So for that reason, I hope that we don't change now mid-stream after we've made all of these investments in these surrounding subdivisions.
I just don't think it would be a good idea. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Susan McNeely.
Susan, there we go. Sorry. Be followed by Michael Wilts.
Thank you very much mayor and council members for allowing me to address you tonight. I am
thoughtful of the time that spent by each of you in your agenda. I served on a local school board
for over 10 years and know that that can be a big demand on your time.
I agree with many of the things that have been said today and certainly feel that my concerns
have to do with that. I live at 40, 15 sweet water drive in College Station.
We are in the Sweet Water subdivision. This property obviously would right up to our property.
As a personal note, 20 years ago, we decided that that was the place that we would live and
retire after scrimping and saving with five children and 16 grandchildren for a place
that we could call home with trees and in fact out of our home, you cannot see another house
because we have woods all the way around.
I'm very, very concerned about the traffic that's been expressed tonight and the safety,
at least a thousand school children traverse Green's Prairie Road every day with their parents
to go to elementary school in an intermediate school.
And I'm very, very concerned about the safety of the smallest of our people since I served
on the school board for a long time.
I'm also very, very concerned about Whippervill Drive.
Whippervill Drive and Sweetwater Drive are county roads.
They have no curbs, no lighting, covered ditch roadways,
and they're made of inferior materials.
They quickly degrade and putting any kind of traffic
through that Whippervill called a sack,
as the plan that's been shown to us would greatly endanger anyone who would need
to traverse that area. So I have 58 seconds left. So what's my most
important thing? I'm concerned about the integrity of a developer and not because
I have anything or knowledge about DH Horton. I know that there's it's been said
that there are suits and other people have suits, this is one of his suits is gone to district
court and it has to do with financial malfeasance. And I'm just very concerned about that, but
even more so than that, I'm concerned that if we instead of restricted suburban, we do
general suburban, there's nothing to hold him to that. And we have had experience with that
in the past where things have gone to changed zoning or changed to our own property.
I would ask that if you are considering the General Suburban, that the things that he
has discussed tonight, that he has told us could absolutely happen, I would suggest that
you refer it to-
Thank you.
Michael Wilts, we followed by Gina Atty, AT, as well.
Thank you. Mary and council members.
My name is Michael Wilts. My home is located on
Pearl River Court in Greensboro Reserve subdivision.
I retired from the company after about 33 years
designed electrical facilities for subdivisions and commercial sites. I was required to go to
site plan meetings as part of my job duties. My former company's mission statement was,
safety starts with me. What that meant was whatever project I was responsible for designing
had to be safe and reliable. This led to my thought concerning design functions within
Green's Fair Reserve. I did not understand the narrowness of the main streets of
Diamondback drive until recent meetings regarding rezoning concerns. Our developer explained
to us the streets were purposely designed in a narrow manner to accommodate low and moderate
traffic. If just zoning, rezoning allows high density development near
Greenfair Reserve, this will affect the safety of our community and streets
given the capacity for low and moderate traffic. In conclusion, you have the
ability to keep our streets and community safe by voting against this
proposal. Please remember safety starts with me and safety starts with you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, sir. Tina, I AT. We followed by Austin Pitman.
Thank you, Mayor and thank you, Council, for allowing us to speak. I'm Jenna Attie. I live in
Greensboro Reserve at 4915 Pearl River Court. I don't have a lot to add, but I would like to reiterate
the reason that we are also concerned about safety.
My motivation for standing here are my two little girls
that will be going to Greensboro Elementary School.
And some of our, my neighbors have described
some of their concerns.
And we love to walk around this neighborhood
and they are sometimes feral.
And I am highly concerned about one of them
in particular running out in traffic
despite me trying very hard to keep her near me.
And I'm one of many families who live there who I think as you increase the amount of density
and you increase this traffic, these have consequences that could be, and I'm not trying to be dramatic,
but these have catastrophic consequences if there aren't a reasonable outlet for these vehicles to go.
And there is an elementary school in that area right where this high density housing is supposed to go
that hasn't been given a lot of attention in addition to several other schools.
And there's inadequate planning for roads right now that that full assessment hasn't been made.
And it will back up into these neighborhoods where these small children and
these dogs and these people of all ages are trying to be outside and be with their families.
And I recognize the need for additional houses here.
But it can't come at the expense of the people who already live here.
And I would encourage you, as others have said, to consider what this rezoning to high density housing could mean.
And I know another member of our community came up here in support of the person who made this request.
And I would like to remind people that this person, the company that's made this request, doesn't have a flawless record.
and those lawsuits are plentiful, and they don't exactly, if you just do a quick Google search,
honesty is not something that comes really high on that search bar, and so I would be giving
something unrestricted is extremely nerve-wracking to those of us who live in these communities that are
immediately adjacent. So thank you so much for your time, and I will apologize to my daughters,
her missing their bedtime, but thank you. Thank you very much.
Awesome, Pittman. Awesome.
Thank you. Thank you, council mayor. I appreciate the opportunity. My name's Austin Pittman. I live at 2333 Storyteller Court in Greensboro Reserve. There are just a couple of points I would like to touch on in response to both the applicant and what other residents have said. I was me and my wonderful wife along with several of our neighbors were the ones who arranged and were encouraged by a member of council to make a committee to gauge
the feedback of our community and see what people wanted and we took that
advice wholeheartedly and we went around and we went to over 200 homes as was
mentioned by a previous resident not one of these residents despite the show
of people standing in support of this rezoning nobody wanted wants this
rezoning and everybody has major concerns about this rezoning I would also like
to touch on the point about the 3.75 homes per acre that the developer had alluded to saying
that the 880 cap that they would come out to 3.75 per acre.
My question, which was also proposed at the rezoning meeting, is why not restricted suburban.
This is clearly under the four homes per acre.
You guys asked the developer himself why not restricted suburban.
There wasn't much of a straight answer, but there was a straight answer given at the meeting
with DR Horton, which is that they cannot profitably do what they want to do in restricted
suburban.
For me as a resident and a tax paying citizen here, that's simply not a good enough answer
to say that a developer can't make a profit, therefore we're just going to allow general
suburban and what they would like to do.
To do.
I would also like to touch that our personal developer for GreensPray Reserve went around
during the staging, like the planning process, reached out to Sweetwater and Nantucket and
the surrounding communities and asked for feedback and chose restricted suburban despite
its lower probable profitability.
This developer said that they were invested in this community.
I would argue that if the Planning and Zoning Committee thinks this is a bad idea, your
feedback that you received from all of the residents in the area, I think this is a bad idea,
and yet you still find yourself saying we want to do general suburban for our profit margin.
I find that that is not investing in the community at all.
I would also like to point out one other thing that I,
one of the comparable subdivisions was Brewster Point that was listed as far as density.
I used to live in Brewster Point prior to moving to Greens Pray Reserve and I will say that
a lot almost all of my neighbors were student housing.
They were properties that were bought because they were affordable and rented out to students.
and it's my concern that that will happen with this area as well.
And as the last person who stood up here said, I would also like to ask,
is this fair for the residents that are in this area who have invested their time
that put down their roots to say to them, we will allow someone else to come in
with a non-compatible proposal and attach it to your neighborhood at your expense and have you
fight the traffic. Thank
you very much sir.
Thomas Walker. Be followed by Rebecca Bunig.
Good evening. Thanks for this opportunity. Names Tom Walker. I live at, and I just move
there. 49-15 dandelion court. Just moved there. In Greensboro Air Reserve.
wouldn't you know. And I've been a resident of this area for college
states for 20 years. So I've seen all this growth.
Everybody before me actually
stole my script. So I'm not going to bore you with that. And they they did it
better than I could have. I do want to touch on a few things. I do not believe
that we should go forward with this project the way it's defined. For all the
reasons everybody said, density, and yada yada yada. But I want to talk on some talk or touch on
some things that I don't think have really been stressed. The first is my perspective is this is
a low tax base endeavor relative to Greensboro Reserve. And some of the other properties that might be
built in that area, or not for this community because I think this community will depress property values.
It will disincentivize builders of more pricey homes, let me say, and homes that have higher tax basis.
I think this community will use more city resources than it will pay for in its taxes.
That will generate a tax deficit for citizens like myself.
And that's really important because I'm 78 years old.
Now, I'm here to talk about senior citizens.
As you know, over the 20 years that I've been here, they have been a driving force of
the growth. A lot of Aggies come home.
They're going to spend their last years here.
So, up this portans for Aggies, and I'm sorry, I'm not an Aggie. I'm a Buckeye. My wife's
So, what it portends are two really devastating things for senior citizens, in my view, and maybe
even many. The first is the dependency of devaluation of what is likely the most important
valuable asset. Think carefully about that because the dominoes could fall based on what you do
here in the next days or so or maybe even tonight I don't know but there are three
plots of land and you've got to understand in your mind whether those are
going to be developed alike the
communities that are there now that provide
a strong tax basis thank
you sir thank you major point thank you
well thank you
We get the point you've been making.
Thank you.
Rebecca, and then Heather Huntley will follow Ms. Boney.
Hello, I'm Rebecca Baynick, and I also live in Sweetwater
at 4104 Lakeland.
I have lived in Sweetwater for 24 years.
I think you've heard most of the concerns that we have
in Sweetwater because of the fact
that we don't have sidewalks, we don't have streetlights.
The street is our sidewalk.
We would like to ask if you do go forward with this,
we were told that the only reason that you would need to connect into Whipperville is for
exit in case there was an emergency in this new subdivision. So we would like to know
if we could put a gate up that you could open during an emergency, but it would stay closed
if we didn't need, because we don't need all that traffic coming through our neighborhood.
They say that they're going to have four homes per acre and that is their average. So if you look
at the plan, there are actually areas where they're planning on putting almost eight homes
for acre. So you're talking about extremely high density. We already have a problem with
traffic on Greenspare Road. I would think that because they only have one exit on Greenspare,
this is going to cause at least another traffic light to go up on Greenspare. It's hard
enough to get out of Sweetwater as it is because we exit onto a county road because we are
a county road. It's hard to turn left on Sweetwater out of Sweetwater. It's going to be even
And more difficult once you have another 1,600 cars coming out of this neighborhood.
If these homes are sold to investors, you don't have some of these garages or one car
garage, one and a half car garages, very little driveway, you're going to have more cars
in the street, and again more cars pouring out into our neighborhoods.
One of the things that yesterday the mayor was on WTAW and Scott Delusia asked about the
the fact that what was going to happen because these homes are not going to hold their value.
And is this something that you want as a legacy and
college station to have a whole neighborhood that does not hold its value?
The question was not answered, and it was just then talked about the fact that we need lower price housing.
But no issue about the fact that these homes will not hold their value.
This builder has hundreds of lawsuits, including multiple class action lawsuits against them because of the fact that they get you into a price, they tell you your home is going to cost $2,100 a month.
And then two months later they say, oh, by the way, here's your taxes, your taxes out another $1,000.
dollars. If you're budgeting for a $2,000 mortgage, you can't afford a $3,000 mortgage.
Do we really want to expose the constituents of this neighborhood of this community to
a builder that has these kind of practices and these kind of lawsuits? And it's not just
a few mayor. It's hundreds of lawsuits. Every state that they build in, they are being
sued for bad quality and for defrauding their clients with these scams about what your
costs are truly going to be.
Your time is about up, Ms. Manny.
Okay.
No, we're the three minutes are up. Thank you.
Ms. Huntley, Heather Huntley, be followed by Val and CPEC.
Good evening. My name is Heather Huntley. I live in the Greens Prairie Reserve neighborhood
as well. And I'm also against the proposed Windom Track rezoning.
Again, most of my points have already been mentioned, so I just want to say a few points
that I haven't really heard that much.
Again, the neighborhood compatibility is obviously an issue for us.
I'm not going to beat a dead horse at this point.
Although I do think that the small lot sizes, I appreciate the ideas of adding to the buffer
zones and those kinds of things, but it really doesn't fix the main concern that I have
about compatibility. Traffic has also been talked about a lot. One thing that I
haven't heard too much about is Earrington Road. Green's Prairie Reserve goes
out into Earrington Road which is a small two-lane road with no shoulders as of
right now. People walk and bike along it and I am very concerned about safety there
as well as within our own neighborhood. Our neighborhood has been designed to
encourage walking and biking and outdoor activity and it doesn't just stay
within our little neighborhood, we go out as well.
And then also with general infrastructure,
I really do believe this zoning could negatively impact
the water and sewer capacity.
My understanding is that the existing utilities
and drainage systems were designed and installed
under the assumption that this tract assumption
that this tract would eventually be developed,
but not at this level of density that is being proposed.
So that is concerning.
I also hear from different folks that College Station ISD is stagnant in growth as someone who has a child in the district at Peacond Trail Intermediate.
I don't see that. I see very, I think that you guys are rezoning as it is and class sizes are large there. So in this particular area of town, we don't see that and I'm concerned about that impact as well.
I'd like to say, I'm not against change, I'm a resident of a fairly new and still developing
neighborhood, and I appreciate that change can be a good thing, however, I don't believe
that rezoning this location to a higher density is the right decision.
I've emailed each of you already, and I appreciate your time today, and I appreciate the five
of you that did respond to me.
I'm confident that you want to do what is best for college station.
And I respectfully request that you are city representatives, act as a gatekeeper for responsible growth, and for thoughtful zoning.
Please agree with the Planning Zoning Commission's recommendation and do not approve the request.
Thank you.
Mr. Rowland, CPAC, Rowland CPAC may follow by Charlotte Gray.
Good evening.
While others have shared thoughts that are incredible in opinions on the views of the zoning into land to general suburban,
I think what has not been mentioned that there is a duty not to just look at the outcome of our decisions for the next couple years before our decisions for the next decade.
Our responsibilities to be had about protecting neighborhood integrity and this council has taken that responsibility seriously and many appreciate it.
However, I want to add that all those neighborhoods had to be built at some point.
To have the legacy and integrity that so many are passionate about is a great thing, but
not if you're opposed from allowing others from yourself creating the neighborhood to
protect.
Midtown, while being new and fresh is doing a great job on building community and building
neighborhood integrity.
And their area over there and part of their world is accomplishing
Meeting, great things. However, it had to be built as a neighborhood. Midtown being situated
between Pebble Creek, Bird Pond, and Emeral Forest has not diminished or degraded the
neighborhood integrity of either of those neighborhoods, but has brought great, multi-generational
neighbors who enjoy the luxuries of the landscape. We sit and we complain about workforce housing
and how we want to provide lower housing for our nurses, teachers, first responders, and
young adults to have the opportunity to build generational wealth for themselves while
taking the first step to buying a home.
However, to do that, we have to have homes being built.
Anyone who is born in this country has the opportunity to chase the American dream.
And part of that dream is working hard, building wealth, and buying your first home.
This city has a housing action plan.
And in that plan, it says, the City Council will work to support affordable housing efforts
through funding or other means of support and encourage an adequate supply of safe, decent,
affordable, and sustainable housing in the city. This proposal meets the criteria that you
set in the plan and you approved and I encourage you to consider that when you're making your decision.
We have to add to the housing supply. It has to be done or we are going to fall behind much other
cities growing outside of this area and lose young professionals who want to work and live here but
can't afford to do so. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. C. Pack. Charlotte Gray.
Charlotte Gray, followed by Hunter Goodwin.
Hi, my name is Charlotte Gray. I live in
Grace Perry Reserve and have lived there for two years. My address is 4911
Dandelion Court, so I'm in the Grove. I also lived in Dan Tuckett for 15 years. I'm
against the rezoning of Windermans for the traffic congestion impact that it will have
on Earrington Road.
I know everyone spoke about Grease Perry's The Nightmare of Well, Earrington Road is also
and these are my concerns.
Someone mentioned it a little bit ago, but Earrington is a two-way street with a ditch on each
side that usually has dead wildlife with cultures lined up, eating, that you have to dodge
around. Deer don't just die on the side of the road. They get hit by an automobile.
Second, there are school buses that stop on Earrington to load and unload children.
Thirdly, I'm concerned for the joggers and the bicycle riders that ride and run on
the shoulder have actually witnessed in my profession a bicycle rider killed in
in the same conditions.
I pray every day that I drive to HB that someone doesn't get killed.
I purchase my home and GPR for the beautiful amenities and for the peace and wildlife.
The result for your vote will threaten that.
I'm asking you to vote your conscience and to vote no.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
The good one, do you speak?
100 good one, 1011, I see him court.
A couple of things I'll say.
I had my team look at the last two years of P and Z meetings.
In that time there were 30 meetings consisting of multiple items.
In all of those discussions, there was only one item related to zoning
that was unanimously voted to deny and it was this project.
That should be telling to all of you.
Secondarily, when you look at the history of these two tracks, they've been lumped together in the comp plan forever.
If you go all the way back to 2013, they were both designated as a state from a land use perspective.
In 2013, those were both changed to restricted suburban from a land use perspective.
And in 2020, the city decided to simplify their designations on land use and in doing that,
that they created two different zoning districts,
suburban, residential, and estate residential.
In each of those, they added zoning districts,
so they remained the land uses,
so they didn't match the zoning.
When they did that, they added this other zoning district.
My point in that whole message is,
for about 20 years, these two tracks,
and their desired intent were exactly the same,
and at one point, they were on the comp plan
as a land use of restricted suburban,
which matched the restricted suburban zoning.
The other comment that was asked earlier is, why no PDD?
And I was actually approached by multiple developers from outside
and consultants that asked me,
minutes, odd, they're going to straight zoning.
Here's why they're going to straight zoning.
It's simple and not one thing that they promised up here
you can hold accountable.
In our subdivision, we have HOAs.
In those HOAs, we restrict no short-term rental as allowed
and because we did it up front, we also do not allow more than two unrelated.
Do you know who the largest developer of build-or-ent communities are in this entire US?
DHI is a subsidiary owned by this applicant.
You have no way of restricting them if you approve straight zoning from turning this into a build-or-ent community.
Not only is that possible, I would argue it's probably plausible.
And it's one of the most egregious acts, in my opinion, when you look at the core fundamentals
of compatibility and being harmonious, this is not harmonious to any of the adjacent subdivisions
that exist today.
So while I appreciate what Mr. Vailen said earlier, I agree with him.
We do need affordable homes.
I just don't think it's right to do them right in the heart of the doughnut, where everyone
around you is not anything close to this level of density.
It's completely inappropriate. It was found that way by your P and Z, and they are the
most unpolitical body. Where do they get calls? Where do they get people that show up?
It is an A political group. And the last thing I want to say, I've got 17 seconds. I did
a PDD. There's at least one council member that sat on that board. What they did not tell
you is you have to have a base zoning district. My base zoning district remained, and do
you know how many my lots from the original preliminary plan I submitted?
All
right, sir.
Ms. Macias, would you like to come back to the podium, please?
Is that that is the
people that wish to speak and
we need to move to
Council discussion, but I want little guidance.
Do you have the zoning criteria that you put up there on the screen or not?
I do not. You do not, but they are five?
Yes, sir. Okay
that most everybody here has been on planning and zoning so I hope you remember
that. Is there a way to get the criteria up?
Somebody's got somebody's got
to crack. They are in the packet on page 652. I know that's not up on the screen.
Yeah that's true they're already in the packet. So if you don't have it open but
that's really what planning and zoning had to consider and that's what we have to
consider. I will open the question for Miss. You're okay.
I just have one question. You have your question for staff.
You said 652. Yeah, I have a question for Rob.
One of the things that I found
interesting as the immediate past year of planning and zoning commission is that
I find it very interesting that something can be presented to planning and zoning
Commission, and then fundamental changes can be made between the time that it is presented
to PNZ and then when it comes to Council.
And what backstop do we have to make sure that we have an accurate recommendation from
PNZ?
And that's in any case.
I think they made a great decision in this case, but they aren't privy to the information
that we got tonight. So that's one question.
Do we have any obligation to take something
back to PNZ?
I can let Adams speak to that if he would like. But I mean, go ahead. Sorry.
The answer is no, there's not an obligation to take it back to PNZ. The information that
staff presented to you tonight was the same information that was presented at the Planning
and zoning commission, what did change was the applicants, the applicants proposal
and that was due to the responses that they heard at their public meetings.
So has the application to the city been modified or only the presentation that was made?
The application has not been modified, so I think that's an important point.
Those are my questions, I'll have more later, I'm sure.
Let me just add another process question.
If we deny this, there's a certain number of months or days that they can't come back
until after a certain number of days.
What is that?
180 days unless there is a significant change to the application.
Okay.
So they could come back with a different application that might have a PDD in it.
For example, just a or a different zoning district within the 180 days, if it was different.
That is correct.
They could come in with a different request.
The reasoning why we did not move forward with the PDD zoning district as they originally heard they originally came in with is that with a PDD zoning district.
The city is looking, the city does not allow PDDs that do not change the original zoning district.
So this request is something that can be accomplished using a general suburban zoning district, and they also have to provide a community benefit with a PDD zoning district as well.
Which they felt didn't fit their business model, they decided they didn't want to pursue it is what I heard applicants say.
As city staff, we did not take forward a PDD request as the general suburban zoning district
accomplished what they would like.
Okay, I understand that, but it was their decision not to pursue whatever aspects of PDD they
wanted.
Am I?
Maybe I missed it.
It was mutual.
I would say it was a direction from staff when they can't pour, like Robyn said with the PDD.
Again, you have to, you need to be doing something innovative and different, so you're looking
to make some subsidies somewhere, some modifications, and you provide an offset that with the benefit.
If you can accomplish something through the use of a straight zoning district, so Castlegate
II is a great example, it's no different than what could come here, that is a straight zoning
district.
When you do a PDD, you're trying to do something that is very different, and that's where you
go into the additional modifications, et cetera.
If you can be accomplished via a normal zoning district, we aren't going to recommend you
to go through this other process in support.
And so I would say it was a mutual change.
It wasn't necessarily one person together,
but that was a conversation between staff
and the applicant on what's the best way
to present this application forward.
Okay, I'd seem Mr. Wright with his finger up.
He wants to ask a further question.
Question for staff.
We're just doing questions at this point.
Yeah, okay.
Absolutely.
You answered my question on PDD because I was gonna ask that.
The other one was a lot of questions about traffic
and I'm sure traffic impact analysis
I think I pretty much understand why I didn't go all the way down to Arrington because at some point that's just further down from the development, but can you kind of speak to as why that might be and just kind of what kind of traffic analysis we have.
Yeah, so Jason can give you the nuts and bolts but basically it's over a mile away from
the intersection that was done so we're looking at a mile radius of the area to be studied.
In addition to that there's a current ongoing project that the county is working on for
that intersection which will have substantial improvements and they take into account all
the development and the comp plan and things like that.
Everything that the city is looking at from a density standpoint is based on the conference
of plan, all of our infrastructure is size and according to those assumptions and so
So, one, it was well outside the boundary, what would be typical for a TIA to be established
and two, beyond that, there's already an ongoing project in that vein.
Right.
Sorry.
I'm going to jump off.
Before we get to Jason, I'm going to jump off some of you said really quickly.
Was the assumption that there would never be this quote-unquote dense?
No.
So, actually, when the comp plan looks at, we've changed it over to the suburban residential
as Mr. Goodle mentioned, he's spot on.
There were some changes that happened over time when the comp plan changed.
We kind of almost had this pseudo-pre-zoning of your track with the comp plan back in the day.
We had you comp plan it to RS, to zone it to RS, and that's not how comp plan should work.
So we brought in that out in 2021 with the update, with a 10 year update, the major overall of the Comprehensive Plan.
We changed that, and when we did that, all of our models were also looked at and adjusted to account for that.
So there's averages that get done when we look at these, the Comprehensive Plan, and certainly was zoning when we kind of nail that in.
But all of all these projects and all our third-party plans are master plans taken to account what the comp plan has to offer and it's been that way.
The comp plan has been in the state of the nation since 2021 and so everything we have to date has been using those assumptions.
The comp plan assumed 800.
Or some.
Yeah, so it assumes it depends on the model you're looking at but there's usually an average of anywhere from 4 to 6 I would say across this whole area.
So we take the blanket area, we're probably assuming four to six in general for like a water
demand.
There's a worst case, and I mean really nuts and bolts these will stop me, but there's
a worst case, an average case, and then kind of like if nothing happened.
And so we run different models at those cases, and essentially we're looking at the middle.
So if there was in this case, four to eight would be your kind of worst case and best case,
we're going to take a six usually, you're going to meet in the middle, and then your average
that out and as things come in over time we can hone that in a little bit a little bit further.
Mr. Smith. Go ahead.
Oh, you want a Jason to speak? I'm sorry.
Good evening. Jason Shabrick playing development services. So this application did have a
Check for the impact analysis.
I was submitted in 2016, the city changed our ordinances where single-film developments of really any size would need to do so. It did study seven intersections, five of those are on Greenspray Road. The ordinance section 7.13 in the audio gives some guidance on what's your study area. Generally when you go beyond a mile, that's kind of like beyond what I guess the normal study scope is. And so specifically the intersection of Greenspray Road in Errington is more than
a mile from this development and so I went to from Castlegate Drive down to
Wood Lake Drive and the five different intersections, three more in between
there. The other part that Anthony had mentioned is that it's part of the
county bond. The textile in the county are working together on a project on
William B. Fitch. The Greens Perry Errington intersection is literally hundreds of
feet away from that. They actually operate, you can't change it without you know
If you take everybody out, then they're just going to be backed up because pitches is the impediment there.
So they're actually connected together, text.nows need to be improvements there, and so they've been working on a concept, and those are connected.
So ultimately, as well as beyond the study boundary, that intersection in that area is understudied to be improved.
And so it's not really, I guess, the burden of this development to go to some major project when it's already been identified through text.nows to do so.
Okay. Okay, Mr. Seth. My question has to do again with process. Okay, the drainage drainage seems to be one of the big one of the issues that were raised.
And I know that you look at, well, zoning, you're not looking at drainage.
Correct. So at some point in the development process, you look at drainage and
detention and things like that that would mitigate the potential impact downstream.
When in the process is that considered and how is it done?
Yeah, so the first time we look at it is on a holistic scale at the preliminary plans that would be the next stage after this.
We're basically looking for areas designated for detention pawns, any green space areas, floodplain areas, things like that.
They have to do kind of a preliminary study of that and then we get into construction drawings the final plot documents
We're nailing down. There's drainage reports
There's the BCS guidelines so the city has joined standards with our city to the north and there's a
Comprehensive list of guidelines. It's hundreds of pages long on what everyone has to follow and meet in order to to build in the city call station
And those that's detention that size of the pipes rose etc all that gets looked at during the construction plan for process
Before any dirt is moved on the ground
Okay. Another question. Okay, several speakers have mentioned concerns with the, I don't know, the reputation or the, of the, of the developer, the builder.
Can the city deny building permits or deny applications based on that reputational issue?
We cannot, and the attorneys are probably squirming in their channels, but no, you cannot, we can't look at property owners.
And again, Texas is a very big property rights state, and as it is, but when an application
comes to the city, it doesn't matter if you're mom and pop, or you're the big corporate,
we have to treat, we treat you the exact same.
Everyone is equal when they submit an application for the city, and everyone has the same rights
to develop their property in a different way.
Thank you.
Mr. White.
Did staff have a conversation with the developer about going to RS?
Where's there any discussion that that could possibly work for them?
I know one of the people testified that it had financial implications.
Did y'all have a discussion with them?
We had discussions more so after the fact of the PNZ meeting where there was that lot of that concern
and kind of that idea of an RS change that come up.
And again, there's, I think it's a flexibility issue is really what it comes down to.
in the minimum, the 10,000 in suspension, so you have to average that out.
Again, when we talk about four units in acre and eight units per acre, that's a purely
mathematical calculation.
It's not what you can achieve.
There's 43,000 in some change, square feet in an acre.
If I divide that by the minimum 5,000 square foot lot, that's eight.
If I divide it by the minimum 10,000 square foot lot, that's four.
But you won't hit that.
You won't get that at all.
So your GPR has is RS base, it's got the overall bill that will be about 2.3 units an acre give or take.
When you look at Castlegate, Castlegate is a straight zoning just like this could be the GS, they're right around 4.2 to 4.8 depending on the area.
Because again that number isn't looked in a vacuum, it's the whole development.
So you have to take out, if you have floodplain, you have Parkland, you have whatever, that counts against you and that calculation.
So, if I've got 70 acres of floodplaining in open space, that counts against what I can get in a density calculation.
So, you end up only seeing probably in that nature of four to five, even being capable under G.S.
And so, when you take that same kind of equation to R.S., you're talking more so, like Mr. Goodwin's development
where he could do four years to make a two, but he'll tell you, just like any other developer, you can't achieve that.
There's too much, there's too many other requirements that take away from that, just rows in general almost
that lowers you down from even for you to be getting three.
So I think they wouldn't be able to achieve
that same ultimate lock count under those RS conditions.
Councilman, just to clarify something
from a process standpoint.
So if someone comes to us and Anthony can elaborate
and says there's a property on your comp plan,
your future land use, it's shown as GSR or whatever it is.
And we'd like to zone it that way.
We don't talk them one way or the other right because it's in compliance with what essentially the council and the community at that point has said
This is what we want to develop there
So it would be different if somebody came if they came and said we are looking at a zoning that's more dense
Then that conversation might be different, but if someone with a property whoever it is comes and says
I would basically like to rezone this to what the city
Says it wants them. We don't try to dissuade them or encourage them any other way
Perfect, that's very helpful. Just to clarify, there's no floodplain in this area. Oh, there's a lot. There's not there's not a female idea there's no female identified floodplain, but there's there is there is creeks right here. And so part of development, we make you go through and and establish what those hundred year floodplains are when we have on on a stylish areas or areas that haven't been studied you have to go do that work for us essentially the developers out there they do that work. And they they
essentially do the flood studying and anything that's in that zone has to be, has to be sectioned
off from lots.
Yeah.
I think I know the answer to this question, but just please verify it.
So there's no way we could, because I support the housing need, right?
We do need the housing.
There's no way to support this and do a amendment to the motion to make it RS because that would
change the comp plan.
We cannot do that.
Is that correct?
No, you can. You can do that. So the comp plan allows for GSRS. If they come with an application for
either one of those two districts by the nature of the comp plan, we have to bring that forward to
you. That is a valid application to be made, but it can be either GSRS for the comp plan.
And so if you wanted to make an amendment that was the whole thing as RS, or if you wanted to make
that parts of the RRS, that's totally within your purview. I would say that also then if you wanted
to change that district, you might ask the applicant first and they could pull or do whatever,
because if whatever you decide goes into law, right, so 10 days from now, whatever you say in
vote for, that would happen. If they don't agree with that and then the application, that would
probably be an issue. But you can certainly make whatever conditions or changes you would want to make
to that. But can I just clarify that? That would be a city initiated rezoning that. If this body did it,
and they didn't ask for it. So if you want to do it as a city, we have to come back. It's a whole
different process. This is still that the applicants request, but if they were
amenable to your condition and they want to pull the item, then understand that it's
amenable. Yeah. That's a very difficult thing to decide at this point. Anyway, we got
a long time ago. Go ahead. So true. To me, to me, it's still a city initiated
thing because I don't think we can negotiate something sitting here with a
But I would be interested to know if the developer, not a long discussion, would the developer
would be interested in zoning this as RS?
No, they, I think we asked that before, but if he wants to come forward to make a comment,
yes, he explained why he didn't do that originally.
As
we've discussed before, rezoning this whole property to RS is not going to be feasible to develop the whole property.
We've proposed some compromises, some limited areas to RS, but from a feasibility standpoint it just doesn't work.
That being said, I do also Mr. Jerry Wyndham who owns the property and is also an applicant
on this would like to come up and say a few words as well if you all would allow him.
I would certainly allow him to say a few words if you'd like, because I have a question
or two for him.
Welcome, Mr. Wyndham.
Thank you.
I kind of feel like an enemy.
Well, we're all up here together, it's all I can say.
Well,
this all began whenever me and my wife have almost reached the age of 85.
And we were looking for to do some land planning, eat at a state planning, and disperse some
of their property and to
move on. We had no plans to do anything with our own place
on Errington Road. We still would have 300 or so acres there.
I
think the fact
that
I've never opposed or complained about anything the city or other developers have done and understand that things change as community grows.
The city designated my land for residential development under the future land use plan.
The
city designated the future thoroughfares go through my property with
the thoroughfare plan.
The city approved all adjacent developments that have been submitted.
Approving those, the city has shown through their actions that this is not rural land anymore.
My question is this.
If this is a part of the city plan for this to be residential, and the city has approved
developments all around in accordance with the plan, then why would they deny the longest
living property owner in the area,
the same approvals?
As I said before, I've never opposed anything on nearby developments, and have seen changes
over the years,
but it has has no negative change to mouth quality of life, but the
increase in neighborhoods and traffic along with the increased number of wild
hogs on my place makes
it difficult to operate a horse ranch and cattle
range on what used to be real property.
I guess I could turn it into a hog lot or feed
a lot or cattle feed lot which I don't think the neighbors would like either but
I would
just urge you to somehow allow us the same considerations that you have allowed to others.
the
developer has
listened to a lot tonight, a lot of criticism. I don't know if any of
that's true. Some of it probably is, but I think the people that you're not hearing
from all the people who can't afford, cannot afford to be in the type of development.
Those of these people are in.
I think that they are
the largest group. There's a bunch here. I think they are the largest group that you're not hearing from.
I appreciate everything you do. I have not been real active in attending
these meetings mainly because of my age.
I was one of the ones that would like and several other developments in the age of
college station and in the Brown City of Eamons and Brown College, the outside of
the
comfortable in their own homes and are not concerned with people outside of
that area. It would be like me I'm comfortable with my house in the middle of
300 acres but I'm not going to demand that everybody, nobody else can come
into that area, and that I want everybody to live in a middle of the 300 acres.
Anyway, that's about all I have to say.
I know that it's not a popular thing, and maybe I will make it a feedlot.
I don't know.
Thank you, sir.
I do have a question that only you can answer, but you don't have to.
it's puzzled me that you have reserved an area in the north section of this. Is there
some plan in mind for that or do you just, is there something already there that you want
to protect? No, there's nothing there to protect. I just thought that with this development it
It would be something that I could keep, maybe it would be valuable at a later date for
some other, you know, commercial or something, and it would be no worse than the same as
the rest of it, if that didn't work out.
I didn't have any particular plans for it.
I see.
I understand.
just available and I could do it and thank you appreciate it. Thank you very much. I have a
question from you. No, I guess there's no questions here. We're going to have to debate the discussion
and debate the issue and see how we can move it forward. Thank you very much for being here and
I appreciate your statement.
Okay.
Another question for staff?
One more question for staff.
It's for staff and Robin.
Robin, can you walk me through?
I know that we went through this planning effort to over the last ten,
fifteen years that involved us consolidating a bunch of the old residential zoning districts.
Can you tell me the history of this particular track as it relates to the future land use plan?
Sure, so I was mentioned previously in the 2014 Commerce of Plan Evaluation and Appraisal Report.
It was recommended to evaluate the appropriateness of the existing future land use and character designations
and recommend any necessary amendments and evaluate the location and amount of estate designated land
on the city's future land use and care to map with the intent of identifying areas that may
support a higher density single family housing. So as of 2014, a state was what, is that like
as an acre, right, an acre minimum? Correct. Okay.
And so at that time, it was changed to the
restricted suburban. And then in the 2020 comments of plan update, the future land use map was updated
to rename the categories and refine the definitions of the categories.
Like Anthony mentioned earlier, previously our comprehensive plan and our zoning districts
kind of matched kind of one-for-one so you would have a restricted suburban, future land
use designation and a restricted suburban zoning designation which isn't an ideal and future
land use plan.
So in 2020 we consolidated some, we renamed them to be what now you see as suburban
residential, and in that suburban residential land use there are two zoning districts
that are appropriate, general suburban and restricted suburban.
So the reason these changes were made in 2020 was to simplify the map and move away from
using the zoning district names, but rather describe types of places and not specific uses or development densities.
So instead of having restricted suburban and general suburban land uses, you now have a suburban residential.
So one other planning question, is it typical to see higher density developments closer to the middle of town or at the very edge of town?
Higher density as in town homes and multi-family, you would see in the urban designation.
So then as you get further out, you would see larger lots, such as estates, lots.
Okay.
And last question I have related to this, what process, I know that there's a big, first
First of all, this is all very complex.
And I know that people that have been doing this for a very long time, it's still a lot
to understand.
You've got the comprehensive plan, the future land use plan, and it kind of all trickles
down from there.
When we updated the future land use plan, what was the process we went through?
Because we took the future land use from an acre lot to up to eight houses per acre.
or what was the process that we went through
where the neighborhood's notified,
or is that something that is done similar
to a rezoning change,
or is it something that we as just counsel and staff
can make that change, and then it rolls out.
So when we are going through changes
like a major conference of plan update,
we don't necessarily notify every single property
on our but it is a larger discussion so we for example we have online surveys that people can
take we have multiple public engagement meetings and we also meet with them on a 101 basis if they
would like.
Okay so if there was a major shift in 2021 as to what that future land use could be
versus what it had been prior to, is that correct?
In 2020, we, sorry, in the 2020 conference of the plan update, we changed the land use
designations, we renamed them, so then on this property it was renamed to suburban residential,
which would allow for general suburban or restricted suburban.
I think 2020 was the year that we were all stuck at home too, so.
So from a history standpoint, when we first started as a state residential council directed staff to go out, find areas, change it.
We went out that time. We did send out. There was a lot of notification. I mean, we had people that came and spoke it.
Council meetings, these we have records of all that. At the time, comprehensive plan of them is weren't mailed for it back back in that time period.
Since then we did the update in 2021, if your property got a change, we did send a mailing to that property.
So I think a lady mentioned earlier who was in the ETJ that she got a letter that we changed their zoning.
We actually didn't change their zoning to your complex process.
We changed the comp plan, and so the comp plan for the ETJ properties also changed with that update.
So anyone including ETJ residents got a letter that's saying, hey, we're looking to amend this thing.
And that was part of, those were targeted outreaches to property owners, but the overall process is just a large engagement of the city does, media outlets, news, etc., stateholders, all that kind of stuff throughout that process.
But certainly, I mean, especially with the last time, people who moved in the GPR for instance, moved in after we did that process.
So from just a timely and a standpoint of how things develop, they probably missed that.
Thank you.
Okay, are there any other questions for staff?
The next thing will be the council have a debate and we'll decide what we're going to do.
But I've been sitting here for three hours or more.
I need five minute break and I'm calling a five minute break.
I apologize to the audience.
I know you all want to hear the discussion, but I think we need to have a break to move around a bit.
Thank you.
We'll be back in five minutes.
Thank you all for your patience.
I will remind the council and others that there are a number of people in the audience waiting for five more public hearing.
So this is only the first of several, so we've got other folks that would like to have their items considered today.
So I will, however, we have an important item on the agenda.
We've heard the applicant, we've heard the citizens, we've heard the landowner.
I think we're prepared to have a discussion, anyone want a discussion?
Do you want to, I'll recognize you, Mr.
Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to set the floor up for discussion, I suppose?
Whatever, if you can find a second, that's okay.
Yeah, so I would like to make a motion to approve the rezoning with
the step down rural. Can you bring that up so I get it correctly and Anthony can walk me through it?
That's one of the two options. Yep. And one of them included the restricted suburban.
The restricted suburban in certain areas. Yep. I'd like to make a motion to approve the rezoning with.
How should I word the same thing with the restricted suburban stipulation that abuts the adjacent
and neighborhoods as shown on this map.
Nailed it.
Awesome.
Okay, I have a motion by Mr. Right.
And a second by Mr. Smith.
You wish to speak to your motion?
Yeah, sure.
Outside of a couple, I think early on developments that were in the ETJ when some other stuff,
I will not likely ever vote against more housing.
I mean, the amount of people that say that's the number one issue in this city, it's hard
to look at more housing and say no to it, especially when it fits within, I think what's
appropriate.
I understand, I do understand where you're coming from, stuck between two neighborhoods,
one rural, one that is sort of larger lot sizes.
I think the accommodations that they're making are more than I would even request them.
So, but I think it's nice. I think they're making those
accommodations. I think we'll lock them in on that. And as the City Council
body, I don't believe that what's legally we can't say anything else other
than this is what it should be zoned as. I feel like all the emails I got and
were sent and read. I feel like I tried to ask those questions that were really
prominent and present in those. And I think that it's been addressed to me.
This is another neighborhood and more houses that we desperately need.
and I feel good about that, so that is where I am.
Mr. Smith, do you want to speak to your second?
Yes, appreciate it, Mayor.
When you look at this map,
if you did the rezoning with the density that's allowed in reality,
when you take out the roads, the drainage, the parks,
You're never going to get that unit to pray, I mean, that just never works out that way, so that's not the density that will be there.
And I believe that this compromise or this proposal was appreciate the developer meeting with the adjacent communities and coming up with something that mitigates the concern.
and I think that's what this does. What it also does is it basically tailors this
rezoning to this development. They're not likely to just flip this land to
someone else and have it become, you know, a whole nother development because
this is sort of a strategic rezoning that follows the pattern of the
proposed development they've got, and so I think that, and again
We need the housing inventory. We need the diversity of housing types. In my neighborhood, we have everything from small zero-lot-line developments to large lots and everything in between. And it's very walkable and very pleasant, and it's a great neighborhood. And I think this one can be two, and it can be a great neighborhood among some existing great neighborhoods.
Okay,
thank you. Any other comments before we consider the vote? Yes, sir, much white.
So I agree with my colleagues. I think housing is a major need in the city.
However, I think
and taking that in consideration. When we talk about zoning, all we have are numbers.
My understanding that I learned tonight is that whatever drawing that we're looking at right now,
there's absolutely no guarantee that that's what that area will look like.
Well, no, wait a minute, the motion is adopting that map.
I think there is not the motion.
My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, that we cannot...
That's why I made the motion that way was that you're making a motion to...
Yeah, some of it is restricted suburban.
You can't adopt this map as it stands in totality.
You could adopt the concepts of RS at the perimeter.
So the red, maroon color at the edges there, you can adopt that that is staying, that that that that that has to be at the perimeter of the subdivision, but all the interior of this is not a site plan.
Correct. All the interior would be up to some of its subject to change. In totality, we talked about the floodplain, the parks, like the councilman Smith said, all that drainage area is going to stay more or less the same.
but how all these things in the middle are laid out that could shift around.
So, to do the numbers based off, you know, square footage and homes and stuff, we don't
know out of the 237 acres what that RS, that maroon area, what area that would be calculated
as that 237, right?
So we don't know.
I mean, we're just looking at a picture.
I can't tell you for certain what it is right now, but I can, it would be essentially a block in along the perimeters and we would, we'd go back out, if that's what was approved tonight, we'd get a survey from the applicant that shows a diff that has that marked out per this exhibit and we would get that in that part of the ordinance, but it would, the, the RS showing on here would be the same, but ignore all the roads and all that that would be, I guess, I guess where I'm coming from is, I, I guess I'm confused when I, when they say they couldn't,
do the whole area RS, but they can come up with this area of RS.
I'm really, as I mentioned, I believe my colleagues are right on.
We need housing.
We need affordable, attainable housing.
I would, based off the motion, I would not be in support of the motion, but I would be in
support of making this whole area R.S.
We will understand you just vote against the motion.
Very good.
Any further comments?
Anybody else have a comment?
I wish to make Ms. McLeanie and then we'll, I think that Mr.
Nancy.
So I think this does go to neighborhood integrity.
I had very much pro-had density where it's appropriate.
The city has set up areas closer into town to encourage that density.
This is a case of which of these is not like the other.
We are called and tasked to look at the suitability of a project as it relates or the zoning as
it relates to its surroundings.
I am also just commenting on the motion as it stands with the RS on the parameters.
There were a lot of different things that were brought up as, I will say, concessions,
the masonry, all of that.
That is not something that we can hold anyone accountable to.
That is not part of the zoning, the zoning.
That is all that's happening tonight.
In order to get density, I think we need to do it where it makes sense, which is not on
the very edge of town in the middle of larger tracks, it needs to be closer in where it
makes sense where the densities are already occurring.
Go ahead, the other piece of this too is our Planning and Zoning Commission worked really
hard and debated the merits of this fully and we had a unanimous denial of this rezoning
And I know they haven't had the benefit of seeing this particular proposal.
But I think we need to think long and hard about overturning a unanimous decision by
our planning and zoning commission.
I think that's a bad precedent.
Thank you, Ms. McLean.
Mr. Nancy.
Thank you, Mayor.
I want to thank everybody that showed up today.
Everybody kept their cool and their temper and check.
And I know the fear that you feel.
I went through a very, very similar situation, engaged you guys.
I see a lot of familiar faces out there, tried to get y'all to work out the same kind of compromise.
I was blessed to be able to work out in my neighborhood for whatever reason that didn't work.
But I think it's a fine constitutional republic we have.
This is a representative position and you guys have advocated on behalf of yourself on both sides.
No, no boogeymen in this thing at all.
Mr. Wyndham, you're my hero, sir.
I live on six acres and I get on my tractor as much as I can.
I can't imagine the trying to manage that size of attractive land
over the lifetime that you have.
I think this needs to be the right fit.
I'm going to be a no tonight.
I'm not a no to more housing, I'm not a no to higher density housing, I'm a no to this zoning request.
I think the way to make this puzzle piece fit is with a PDD where you guys come together and you talk it out.
And maybe you can come to an accord, maybe you can't.
And like my esteemed colleague, it's a representative position.
I have to trust the committees that are, that we appoint.
I just don't know how we can go against a unanimous decision by the planning and zoning commission.
So guys, please bring it back as a PDD.
And see if you can work something out with the landowner.
I think under a PDD you guys could ensure that there would be, it would be a deed restricted community and you wouldn't, it couldn't go to rental.
And if you guys can't agree to that, well, then that kind of tells us something that we needed to know.
We're looking for entry-level housing if families can buy and accumulate generational wealth for themselves, not more rental housing.
So, thank you for your presentation and thank everybody for their level-headed approach and your quality feedback.
Mr. Schaefer.
Thanks, Mayor.
Yeah, I appreciate the way you put that, Bob.
I appreciate the folks who are out here.
We've seen a lot of this this year, some of you know that the folks have been very engaged and that's a good thing.
and I think both sides have stated case as well.
I'm gonna fall back on the same idea that the P and Z
thought about it carefully, I went back and watched their
meeting thoroughly and tried to understand where they were coming from
and I think I did.
And then the other thing I'm gonna fall back on
is the comprehensive plan.
And chapter three, and we have it right here in our packet,
it indicates that new neighborhood should be designed to fit
with the existing fabric of the community.
And I realize that can be taken different ways, but in this case, I'm going to say that
it's the existing fabric of this adjacent community, and it is tough.
You can tell it's tough.
We're all up here talking about how we, I would certainly agree, we need housing.
We need whatever affordable housing or attainable housing is.
And when you're in a growing community like this, it's a tough deal to try to equate the
kind of quality that some of you are expecting in larger lots with the need for smaller lots
and things that are more affordable. And here we are up against it, right here. But I
think, in this case, I'm going to come down on the side of wanting this to be something
that's not quite as dense in the evening.
Okay, so thank you. I think everybody has spoken. As I understand the motion, the motion
is to approve a rezoning on this property that would have General Suburban
except for those areas that are indicated that would be classified as
restricted servant. Is that correct, Mr.
I'm sorry, is that what you heard?
Maybe I should ask, is that the motion, right?
those opposed to raise your hand and say aye.
So the motion fails five to two.
Mr. Attorney, where does that leave us?
We have a failed motion.
We could have other motions.
Or do you need another one?
No, motion fails.
This motion fails in what is conditioned
upon these specific items.
Right.
OK.
So that we're done.
Yes.
All right.
That's it.
But as
I said, we have five other public hearings tonight.
So those that are only interested in 8.1 are welcome to leave.
But we're going to 8.2 and we've still got some other item besides public hearing.
Well, they're leaving.
I'm going to read out loud the item 8.2, which is a public hearing presentation,
Foundation possible action regarding an ordinance amending appendix a UDO article for zoning district section 4.2
Official zoning map of the Coto ordinances of city, college station
Texas by changing the zoning district boundaries from GS General suburban to mh middle housing on approximately
0.5 acres generally located at 1612 park place a and B. Mr. Sieger. Thank you mayor
Good evening, Councilmembers, Gary C. Grave, staff planer, planning and development services.
This evening's request is to rezone the two quarter acre lots located at 1612 A and B part place,
and they are currently developed as single-family homes.
These properties comprehensive future land use designation is mixed residential, which allows for a mix of moderate density residential development.
that is appropriate for residential infill and redevelopment that allows
original character to evolve.
The request tonight is to re-zone these properties from General Suburban to
MH Middle Housing, permitted uses for middle housing are duplex single-family and
townhouse. After discussion and review staff has determined that this request met
the outlined rezoning criteria in the UDO. This was heard at the October 16th PNZ
commission, or the commission unanimously approved, or recommended approval 60-0, and I and the applicant are available for any questions.
One quick question.
Yes, sir.
And what is the advantage of changing this to middle housing from General Suburban to to put it in middle housing?
Just, just, from a planning standpoint, it follows the comprehensive plan.
I was kind of principled and but it allows the owner to do
Well, different development types, yes sir. Okay. So we can put different kinds of
Housing although it's only two lots. Yes, sir. They can do the duplex a single keep it a single family which it is or townhouse
And they could apply for shared housing category shared housing is not currently defined and is not enforceable
That is something we are working on. Okay. Okay, very good
So I heard a presentation. You got any questions? I got a question from Mr. Schafer. So
Here at Helmöider if they if this changes to middle housing and obviously it probably won't redevelop right away
But if it does will it be your sidewalk requirement? I
Believe on the on the on those lots. I realize it can't be on the pedestrian plan. I believe there was
proposed pathway on the other side of the street
But I believe there was also discussion about fee and
loop for future redevelopment.
Okay, well I mean one of the things we have in middle housing is I recall is trying to
make these areas more walkable and one of the things is disappointed me.
I live in this generally in this neighborhood and come and go in part place all the time,
be a bike and car and it's horrible for walking.
It's absolutely terrible and people do walk the HB that way regularly so I know this would
just be one tiny piece, but it would be nice if we could do, and through a redevelopment
in here in the future, a better connectivity for walking, yes sir.
So the answer is no. They don't have to do a sidewalk if this redevelopes.
Partly no, partly yes. So we actually are doing a study and I think
We're doing a study right now through this corridor. We just finished it where we had a consultant go out there and figure out how we would add a sidewalk through this connection and what that would look like. And so they came up with three different options. We landed on an option closed out that contract. So there is a sidewalk planned with the nature of that project. It'll need to be a standalone request because it's a very tight right away through here. And so in order to get that in a piecemeal fashion, it just isn't very sufficient.
So, we're working on bringing a project through the Bike Pet Board, as well as Ultimate Counsel, to get this whole connection finished.
And that study finished just within the last four months, we had a consultant go out there and survey the entire corridor to get that figured out.
That's even better, Anthony.
I tried.
Yeah, because it's just, and people do walk this with bags of groceries and there are cans in the street, and it's bad news, I'm surprised I know what he's been hit and killed, thank you.
No other questions? This is a public hearing. I have no one who signed up to speak, but
I will open the public hearing and see if there is anyone who should speak on this item.
Seeing no one come forward, I will close the public hearing and turn to the well-to-council.
Move to approve. Second. Motion made by Mr. Hansi. Seconded by Mr. Schaeffer to approve.
any further discussion? Seeing none, Chairwoman, ask for the vote. All those in favor of the motion to approve item 8.2, indicate by saying aye and raise your hand.
Aye.
Motion carries unanimously. That has been approved. That's 8.2. We move to 8.3.
Again, public hearing, presentation, discussion, possible action regarding ordinance amending.
Appending say UDO, Article 4, zoning district section 4.2, official zoning map of the
Court of Ordinance, City College of Texas, by changing zoning district boundaries from
our world to PDD plan development district for approximately 3.6 acres at 3768 McCullough
a road, generally located north east of the intersection of Wellman Road and McCullough Road and I do have a speaker signed up for this.
Welcome Mr. Hall.
Thank you. Good evening there and City Council, Jeff Howell with the Planning and Development Services Department.
Tonight's request is for rezoning for property that is currently vacant in a portion of the church property.
The future land use designation is currently neighborhood commercial, this commercial designation on the future land use is smaller in comparison to the general
commercial but a does cater to nearby residents.
And this was approved earlier this year to change this designation to neighborhood commercial.
The applicant's request is to change the zoning district from our role to PDD plan development district.
And this is identified by the applicant as to be an extension of the adjacent development.
As with a request to plan development district, they did provide a base zoning district which in this case would be well-born commercial.
And they did also include a concept plan which can be seen here.
The concept plan does show a commercial development with single-story billings, not larger than 10,000 square feet.
As part of the concept plan, they did include several modifications.
They did include modifications to the allowed uses, as well as additional prohibited uses.
They did also request modifications to not require architectural standards, reduce the roof pitch and
change the location of parking locations adjacent to residential uses.
As part of that to offset those modifications, they did provide community benefits with that it would be to provide a landscape buffer of 30 feet on three sides with the double of plantings as well as to limit the building height to single story and to not exceed 25 feet.
And we did receive one phone call and support in three calls of inquiry.
This item was heard at the planning and zoning commission meeting on October 16th, where it was unanimously recommended for approval.
And that concludes my presentation.
I have one question, a clarification, I have to go back one to the modification request.
It has been suggested to me that self-storage, which they're asking for, as an additional
allowed use, is not somehow or another allowed within the well-burned commercial land use.
I'm not quite sure, but have you been challenged on that before?
So that question did come up and so it is identified when you look at the table of permitted uses
It is identified as a permitted use for those uses that were existing prior to 2011
Which is when the properties would have been annexed as part of the the World War
Plan and so that's when this property was annexed into the city and so similarly the adjacent planned development district to the to the left of this
Had that similar modification to allow for that use and so this is a continuation of that and so they are requesting the same thing
and so it's already been allowed in that previous PDD
towards the highway.
That's correct, and that was approved in 2020.
And so that indicates that it has been approved
within the 2020 as well after it was annexed,
so I understand that.
Correct.
OK, thank you, it may come up later,
but I just want to clarify that.
Any other questions for staff?
Mr. Schubert?
I have a safe to assume, I guess, that
when they want to get away from the non-residential
architectural standards, I mean, there's not really
a why here is it safe to assume it's about cost you're making a cheaper building it was identified
from the applicant I can let the applicant speak to that a little bit more because they are here but
it was identified they are requesting that modification because it does not front onto one more
road right that's one reason but I mean there's still a matter of character within the entire community
and this is still visible to people who'll be at the church is visible in some other ways so
So it just, I mean, I don't know why you would, you know, you can say that, but there must
be a reason for not wanting to do it.
You reduce the pitch, you take it off, it makes cheaper building presumably.
I mean, that's okay, you don't have to answer that, but that's, to me, that's a concern
when these kind of things when come in and do, they do things that do affect the aesthetic
of the community, even though they're not right up against the road, that's not always
is the first indicator in my opinion, thanks.
Would you just shift that back to the previous slide
that you had it there?
No, not the one that has the, there you go.
Leave that there.
Any other questions?
Seeing none from the council at this point,
this is a public hearing.
Thank you very much, Mr. Hall.
I'll just stand by.
I'll open the public hearing.
And I'll call, I think it's Mr. Bob Cohen, who
has signed up to speak.
So I will open the public hearing and ask for him to speak and anyone else who wishes
to welcome
her.
Thank you, Mayor and Councilman and ladies.
My name is Robert Cohen or Bob Cohen.
I live at 36.55 from a color road.
I recognize that's real close to the gris and the picture that's on the screen right now
that yellow line is about a hundred and ninety nine feet long and it's an estimate from
corner of our property to the corner of this property, and we were not notified that this was
happening. But maybe we're 205 feet. And so when you get one of the arguments of when you get
into rural area, 200 feet doesn't quite cover the rule that the state requires. And by the way,
that's not a maximum. That's a minimum. Thank you. That's number one.
The pictures you received
from Jane Cohen. This is one of them. There's a couple of them showing some flooding.
And one of those is a picture of the right-up-the-drive way from Melbourne Road to the church.
And the intersection closest to Melbourne Road has got water flowing over it.
And the reason that is is all land to the lift of that driveway is drained through that one covert down there to end.
which brings me to the next question. If the property owns the property against
Robert Road, why didn't they put the storage there? Well, of course, it floods.
Can you advance that?
Okay. There was a photo, there was a little plot. Okay, the
B part that shows on here is the part I'm talking about, everything to the north of
the driveway entrance, which is the one that's got section
of it is two-way.
And from there all the way up to Band Cut-Off Road,
which is the next road north of that.
And by the way, in this particular part of the country,
where the road is, to the north and south.
A is our residence.
And the property is just north of the church,
as you see that said, where we're in Baptist church.
in a few advance at one more click and
there's a picture from Webberville to the
church and my more major concern is light pollution so we're just gonna have
to have light around it and one of the things that we like the dark sky and we
got out last night to try to see the Aurora boy Alice and guess what we could see
Brian in conversation lines real well. Look in north from our house. And at the
planning and zoning, one of the members of the church testified and he said you
know there's 60 members of the church who voted to do that and I said well we live
there and he responded we do too. I said I know everybody lives within 500 free
to that church, and he ain't running. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Cohen. Is there anyone else wish to speak to the applicant here?
Maybe wish to speak to. I should have invited you before if you
wanted to speak, but you weren't on the list. I'm sorry about that. I'll introduce
yourself and address and we'll. Good evening. My name is Tom Marty.
I live at 4324 Ledgestone Trail.
And I do live in that community. I live just about half a mile from that church, and I'm
proud to say I've been a member of that church for 15 years. And I'm going to tell you
that Wellburn Road does flood, and we do have a little bit of a flood problem at the end
of our driveway, but it doesn't keep people coming to and from our church. We get in there
all the time. So that 3.6 acres of property does belong to the church. The church membership
over a year ago decided that we've wanted to have this done.
The contractor came to us and approached us to make this happen.
He already owns the property that's in front of it that it butts up against Walburn Road.
This is just an extension of what he's already going to do.
So I see no reason why the church shouldn't have the right to sell our property and allow
this contractor to come in and do what he's already going to do.
So with that, I've taken as much time as I can possibly take.
I hope you have a pleasant evening.
Good night.
Thank you, Sarah.
Appreciate your being here.
Staff, another person wants to speak, please.
Glenn Jones, J4 Engineering.
I'm the applicants agent for this application as well as the design engineer.
And I wanted to answer Mr. Schaeffer's question, and if there were any others, I could help answer those as well.
As far as the architectural requirements for the buildings, they only apply to the first 200 feet of the project in front of it.
So by putting it into this new PD, it just extends what we're doing in the back half to this new section.
That's really the only reason.
Those buildings are all shielded by the ones in front, and the architectural elements just won't be visible.
Thank you, sir.
Any other questions I could help?
No, the questions for the engineer.
No, I don't think so.
Oh, I'll ask a question really for staff.
As I understand it, the text dot has plans to widen Walbert Road,
so I would imagine that would change and improve the drainage substantially wrong there.
I had to work with text dot for the driveway in the front portion.
They are widening and they noted the drainage problem that you saw in the pictures.
And there's quite a few improvements that's going to help address that.
The virus is part of it with the detention system that we're putting in.
Thank you, sir.
I see Ms. Cohen standing, so I cannot deny her the opportunity to add anything to what Mr. Cohen might have mentioned.
Mayor and Council, thank you for hearing us.
Joining Cohen, 3655, McNeill Road.
I did send you my comments.
I had a meeting earlier tonight.
and I heard back from one of you that you received them.
So thank you.
I'd like to go to the third slide or the last slide that Bob had.
And yes, I understand that during each the next one is the next one.
It's a problem that's Melbourne Road.
And yes, if Melbourne Road is widened and has mediums down it,
then that should be taken care of.
But it's a problem now.
So let me go back to the comment about could you show the slide
that shows the proposed development, the city slide that shows the proposed development.
On the top right it says that it's proposed modification, which is self-storage.
Self-storage is not in the well-burned plan, it says modification requested.
Now that was in the materials we got, maybe I don't understand them, but I've asked and I
I still don't agree that the sales storage is possible.
The other point, well, sales storage
may not be as bad as some other options that could happen there.
Yeah, I realize that we do need some storage.
But when they say it's protected by other areas,
go to the slide that shows one of the maps.
What's in front of it from Wellburn Road?
Nothing.
Are they saying that the Wellburn Baptist Church
she's going to protect vision of that. I just, I hope that the developer does a little bit better
than what's been presented. The drainage, you see.
There's a little drainage teach up there. But the drainage was this way and you're going to have concrete where all the buildings are going to be. So I'm not sure how drainage is going to really be handled. So, um,
by mentioning the lighting concern, I mentioned the trees were in, uh, letter, email, I sent you. Planting and zoning really works well with us. I'm getting native trees. Our new director wants native trees. So I think I think this has possibilities.
and I'm not sure how much restrictions you can add but it's not a well thought out plan now. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ms. Cohen. I'll staff to come back.
Any further questions your staff?
A couple of quick ones here. Did anybody have another comment? Was the public hearing so open? Is there any other comments?
Okay, I'll close the public hearing and are there any other questions or stams?
I'm sorry.
Do you have a question here?
I'm just looking the wrong way.
Thanks, Mayor.
Jeff, we've had a lot of deliberation on this.
I thought there was like significant buffering that was added around the building.
Did I?
Okay.
So this slide identifies a landscape buffer that has provided this is an increase as it is identified as a community benefit from what the requirement would be.
The requirement is a 20-foot landscape buffer with offense as part of the well-born commercial zoning district.
But the applicant is providing a 30-foot buffer with offense as well as the plantings.
Great deal. And just bottom line it for me what the mayor was asking about. Are we
or are we not under a promise in the well-burned district that we wouldn't put
any allow any self-storage? Yes or no? Well the the the permitting use is in the
use table does identify it as a permitting use but it does have specific use
standards that say they are allowed prior to 2011. So they are allowed but then only prior
to 2011 because that's when the property was annexed. So it is allowed but not technically
after 2011. And so that's why as part of the modification they are asking for it similar
to the property to the left.
That's correct. But they're allowed to add it as modification as they already have done
in the first part of the PDD, correct?
Correct. And technically they could add additional uses as part of this. But in these additional uses are identified as allowed uses on the adjacent plan development district as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. We have it before us. Public hearing has been closed. No further questions. Sure. We'll entertain a motion regarding this item.
I'll
make a motion to approve, is that what you said?
There's a second.
I'll second.
Motion made a second.
You'll speak to your motion.
You'll speak to second.
Okay, so I have a motion to approve this proposed rezoning to APDD.
Any further questions, comments?
Don't see any.
All those in favor of the motion are stated.
i'm sorry to say aye and raise your hand
motion carries unanimously i think
i missed everybody down there but it looked like everybody raised their hand
that's the problem with the dyes mr. city manager i'm always complaining about it
i can't see everybody maybe you should do the counting for me now i will leave that
go okay motion pass unanimously thank you all for being here for making your
presentations to the co-ins. I think the PDD will answer a lot of the questions you have
and the drainage will be taken care of. Certainly the lighting I know is all has to be focused
down. All right. Let me see where am I up to 8.3. No, that was 8.3. Sorry, 4. This one is
we're 8.4 and 8.5 are tied together, correct?
Correct.
Okay, and we have Mr. Harper here to present them.
So I'm going to read both of the 8.3 and 8.4 and 8.5,
but we'll have separate votes, but we'll have one presentation,
one public hearing, and separate votes,
and no one assigned up to speak.
Okay, 8.4, public hearing, presentation, discussion,
action. Approving ordinance vacating and abandoning a 0.082 acre portion of 34 wide landscape
access and public utility easement located along block 2 block 2 block 4 of the business
center of college station subdivision phase 2. Where is this county of Texas according
According to the plan recorded in volume, 3490, page 267 of the official public records of
Brasis County.
That's 8.4, 8.5 is very similar, except that it is a improvement of ordinance vacating
and abandoning a 0.252 acre portion of a 30 foot wide landscape utility easement located
on the 1 hour block 4 of the Business Center College Station Subhibition Phase 3.
As a county Texas according to the Plaths recorded volume 3764, page 130 and volume 11,640,
page 99 of the official public records.
As a county Texas, Mr. Lucas Harper will lead us through this request probably using less
words than I've already read.
Thank you, Mayor and Council.
Lucas Arper, Plenty and Development Services, tonight's agenda item, items 8.4 and 8.5
are the requested abandonments of portions of landscape access and utility easements
located in the business center, phases 2 and 3.
The easements are located adjacent to and surrounding the technology way, right away that
It was heard and conditionally abandoned by Council at the March 27th, 2025 City Council meeting and there are approximately 550 feet north east of the intersections of technology way and Lakeway Drive.
The platted easements are generally 30 feet wide and the portions to be abandoned do not house utilities.
These portions of the easements reserved for access and maintenance of the existing utilities located in the conditionally abandoned right away have been excluded from this abandonment request.
The request for abandonment was initiated by the applicant due to their desire to construct a portion of their structure and supporting drive-alls and parking in the area of the easements.
It's all utilities have provided consent for the
amendments and city staff does recommend approval.
I've had no inquiries about this and with that concludes my presentation.
Any questions for staff?
Seeing none, I'll open the public hearing.
Anyone here who wish to speak, there was no one signed up for it.
So I will close the public hearing and go to the Royal Council on 8.4.
We've got a vote separately, correct?
May the approval.
Second.
May by Ms. McLean, a second.
Pop.
Second by Mr. Smith.
I'll take it again.
Who never?
I've got Mr. Smith down here.
So we have motion second to approve 8.4.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Anyone wants to make a motion?
Then item 8.5.
May the approval.
Second.
Mr. Wright, second.
Can I ask a question for a vote?
Yes, sir.
Thanks.
Why doesn't everybody do this?
Why, I mean, we're looking at why wouldn't everybody just come in and ask for this land
back?
No, well, that's an economic development discussion.
I was involved in that discussion with a company that is there.
they own the property across the way, we have already abandoned the state.
I heard that, but it just strikes me that, you know, there's a lot of right away that
we obviously put aside for a reason, and if I was doing not, I would put aside for the
sale of property next door to the property.
Okay, we'll have to talk about it now.
And they've already bought that property, they want to expand.
Okay, I'm trying to answer the question.
And that's why a lot of people don't come and ask for it
because they don't own the property there.
And it's going to affect other people.
They couldn't make it.
Couldn't if they didn't own the property.
OK.
OK, motion has been made and seconded.
All those in favor are any further questions.
I don't want to rush anybody.
OK, motion made and seconded.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
We have. Thank you both of those abandonments. Item 8.6
Public hearing presentation discussion possible actually regarding an ordinance amending chapter 103 building
Buildings and building relation regulations article three technical code is division two
Building codes and division three electrical codes adopted by in adopting
adopting the 2024 International Codes, the 2023 National Electrical Code, and EC and related amendments.
Mr. Benford.
Welcome.
Mayor Council, Brian Benford.
Building official.
Let me adjust this.
So the codes, both the ICC codes and the National Electrical Code are updated every three years.
For various reasons, a lot of it's to keep up with federal standards, but you know, there's new safety features that come in.
things of that nature, excuse me, we as a city are currently under the 2021 International
Codes and the 2020 National Electrical Code and this new proposal there is actually less
total amendments and that's a lot of that to do with state law that changed and you can't
regulate, like we've talked about building materials, well that carries over into construction
materials as well and so there's seven new amendments but the total number of amendments is actually
gone down. This is just a highlight overview of some of the changes.
Decreased
attic insulation for one and two family dwellings. I won't read everyone
to you. I know you've had this, but this covers kind of the whole family of
codes and some of the changes that are in there.
Our glass fiber works and concrete. You'll go back. I'm sorry. I thought that stuff
works. Yeah, it was we had a pretty cool meeting on that with a company.
So, Brian, why would the only question I have when I looked over this is decreased attic
insulation?
Yeah, it didn't make sense to me.
I mean, this all seems fine, but I just wondered why that was.
Great question.
I actually had been into training the last three days, and that was one of the questions
I was trying to get addressed.
And so, in the 2018 codes, residential home was R-38, and then in the 2021 codes, it went
to R-49, and essentially coming from, and you have to look at everything and wear the information
comes from what associations putting out the information and where they are in that aspect.
But it was you spend the money to get to this point and then the money from that point
to that point doesn't justify that it takes a lot longer to get that money back, I guess
is the best way to say it.
So you spend it all getting to that R38 and then that additional increase just isn't getting
the return that you would think the homeowner would get from it.
How was it?
It was explained to me.
So it's back to 38 now. Yes, some other number. Yes, sir. Yes, Eric. So it was 38. 49 back to 38. Yes, sir. I
Absolutely hate it when they do that with full swing changes, but it does happen.
Any other questions on this page? Oh, sorry. I'm sorry again. And so we did provide an overview of all the changes to the leadership group with a greater
of Rises Valley Builders Association back in July and August got those to them in two
batches, had a couple questions back and forth but they even supported some of the new amendments
we had in there and then this was presented to the construction board of adjustments on
October 28th and it was a unanimous recommendation for adoption as approved or as presented.
I don't know if changes you had on the previous pages, those are changes in the code, they're
not amendments by the way, it's just, that was just a, just summarizing, okay, yes sir.
And so staff also recommends approval.
We do request an effective date of January 1 to give projects that are currently under design
time to work through that before we, you know, we're not just changing it in 10 days on them.
And then I'm here for any questions obviously.
Any other questions for staff?
Mr. Benford?
I just want to say one thing.
Oh yeah, Mr. Benford is not here that often, but we have had the recent experience of working in a different municipality.
And I very much appreciate that your inspectors are incredibly responsive, usually out the very next day that has not been my experience elsewhere.
I just doubly appreciate I think we take that for granted but you guys are awesome. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Seeing no other questions or staff. This is a public hearing item 8.6. I don't have anyone signed up to speak on this. So but I'll open the public hearing anyone want to speak on on this item.
Seeing no one I'll close the public hearing and turn to the will of the council.
second. Second. Third. Everyone and everyone. Mr. White, may the motion. Who seconded? Anybody?
Bob?
I'm sorry, Scott. I have to do this so we keep the records read for the City Secretary's
minutes. Okay. All those in favor say aye. I posed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Mr.
been heard, appreciate your being here the next item is related and well not directly but similarly.
It's also code related if I can.
Turn the page.
Item 8.7. Presentation, discussion, pathway, action regarding ordinance, amendment
chapter 16, fire prevention, and protection, article 3, fire code, section 16, 51, 16, 52,
and Article 4, life safety code, section 16, a, Mr. Giordano. Good evening, camera Giordano,
Fire Marshal is going to be a very similar presentation to Mr. Benford's here posing the 2024 International Fire Code and 2024 Life Safety Code.
Their update every three years as well are tasks are our goal going into the code cycle.
This cycle was to look at our amendments and finding duplication and do we still have a necessity for amendments.
like the building code, we also have fewer amendments than previous.
We removed a lot of duplication that were found in other codes that we didn't really need anymore.
We're on the 2021 International Fire Code and Life Safety Code.
We have eight new proposed local amendments and we're proposing to remove nine.
Like I said, mainly due to duplication.
The highlights of the fire code changes are carbon monoxide detection is now going to be required
in every occupancy that has gas, fuel, burning, appliances, those are previously just found
in education or residential. The big changes for the IFC this year were they added entire
sections over lithium batteries. That's kind of the new thing in fire safety and that's
kind of our new thing that starts fires now.
Where is typical? Where would you find that? A storage room would be a commercial property
that's selling these things? And in stores like Home Depot and Loes, they take recycled
batteries. So really anything over 15 cubic square feet is going to increase the fire safety
requirements. And that's only 255 gallon barrels or the batteries.
All right. Thank you. So there's some new alternative fire
signature systems that are now in the code. These are good for IT rooms that don't
really want water on them.
These were also presented to the construction board
of adjustments on October 28th and they voted unanimously to recommend adoption
as presented. As do we with a request of effective date of January 1st?
Okay, this is not a public hearing, interesting enough.
But any questions for staff?
Thank you very much for your presentation.
Chair, will you take the motion to approve?
No, ma'am.
Motion made and Mr. Wright, second.
By Ms. McLean.
Any further discussion?
No, sir.
Just one comment.
Yeah, please, you're in the business, yeah.
No, the fire marshal shows it faster than Benford's
specter, so good job to y'all, too.
They usually come same day.
Thank you. Thank you. Okay, the motion second. Oh, isn't it to approve all of the favour of
saying aye. Aye. Opposed. Motion carries unanimously. That's 8.7.
8.8 and 8.9. This
is separate. Mr. Australiski is coming forward. I got it. They're both baseball related in
different ways, so I'll let them be separate, I guess, unless you need it together in one.
No, they can be separate.
I had evening Mayor City Council, I was ready to type the heading.
Presentation discussion, Council action, regarding the Veterans Park and Midtown Area Baseball
Field Projects, Mr. Shrowski.
Yeah, Michael Astralsky, Chief Development Officer.
So this item is to get some direction from Council.
Next step says it relates to baseball, really looking at two different components, one, the
championship field as well as the remaining complex with the eight other fields.
You've seen a proposal by Southern Roots, so staff is really looking for
direction right now on how to proceed on both of those. One option with the
championship field is in probably the quickest option for it to be built would be
the city construct the championship field likely in the corner of Midtown Drive
in corporate parkway extension and then look at one of the options we could look at there too is
is that design fit specifically for that location we may look at some modifications for the design
to add some additional capacity if there was an opportunity for let's say a minor league team in
the future we could look at some potential design changes to have the ability to expand it in the
future if that were the case but then the second portion with the complex itself we
We've been presented opportunity from a private entity through seven routes.
And so the question with that is, does council want to negotiate directly with that group?
Or would you like to go out for a request for proposals to see if there are any other potential
respondents that would be out there?
That's a summary of your presentation, so you're looking for direction.
We are.
All right.
Who would like to provide some direction and Mr. Nancy?
As one member of council, I'd like to see us treat this as a sole source, economic development project without going to bid with the exception of the championship field, which I, as one member of council would like to see this city of college station take that on as an expedited and concurrent project under the auspices of city hall and our staff.
Any
other comments in support of that or a different direction, Mr. Smith?
My comments would be in support of that as well.
I think in order to expedite the development going ahead with southern routes and moving on with that and then also doing a concurrent city capital project on the championship field.
other comments. Just a quick question from Michael are you asking
you for us to evaluate the sitting capacity now or just allow for the
expansion in the future. We could look at and work with the architects to see
what it would take to expand the currently designed facility to potentially add
those in the future. To support the economic development agreement over the RFP
process and also support the immediate rollout of anything we can do to get that championship
fill moving. Any other comments? Looks like I'm shaking
your head. Mr. White. I'm in full agreement with one of my colleagues. Chair, can you
kind of give us a timeline if we move forward with this championship fill?
Would it be ready
for 2027? June 2027? June 2027, likely not. I think
get the earliest, you know, if everything went correctly and we don't hit weather delays
and so forth, you're probably looking later, 2027, but more likely 2028 for the opening
of the season there.
We will do everything we can to expedite it to see how quickly we can get it for 2027, but
likely not June, but it could be later, 2027.
Thank you.
Okay. No further comments? Before we finalize our direction, I do have a speaker, Mr.
Erie Giva. Erie Giva has signed up to speak, even though it's not a public hearing, but it's an item on our agenda.
And anyone who wishes, anyone's welcome to speak.
Hi, good evening, Erie Geva from College Station, and I had my friend Kaboom, but as well
passes bedtime, also long time resident in the College Station.
There's been some talks about what minor league baseball really means.
Most would agree its fireworks, drone shows, public heads, custom jerseys, DC bat races, kids
running the bases every night, supporting local charities, great mascots like Kaboom.
I wish you would hear that because I never compliment him.
Baseball camps, fun food, and developing future talent.
I think the future talent is a key with Corey Colbert, a Sion winner, Hunter Pence, an MLB
All-Star and World Series Champion, Paul Goldschmidt, and National League MVP,
Aja Minter, Bryce Miller, and others who've made a mark in the majors.
They all came from the Texas Collegiate League, some of them have been bombers as well.
And they make more impact in the major leagues than any independent professional league has
ever made in Texas.
even coaches like Tyler Gillim who now leads the Savannah bananas once wore a
bomber's jersey. We're thankful for the City of
Colossation's vision to secure the bomber's long-term home. Your home time
minor league baseball team. I respectfully urge the council mayor to act tonight,
move forward with the championship stadium at Midtown, relocate the current
veterans design to Midtown Drive and keep the momentum strong. This decision will
not negatively affect the amazing project the city is working with to finalize with Thomas Rogers
and his group. Thank you for your time and your leadership. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You have a
question for him? Yes, sir. We made a commitment to you and the bombers that we would have a
championship field and we said we would do that in 2027. It looks like now probably you're looking
in that 2028 as the opening day for a conversation.
Is that doable for you?
I mean, are you able to find various alternative locations
for the next three years?
I think in working with the city staff
and the steam colleagues up here
that there's a wonderful facility at Texas A&M at Olsen Field
and there's a great economic relationship
between the city and the university
and that could be an option to play some games there
in 2027, there's other economic ways to make sure that the bombers are going to be here
by 2028.
So, we'll work with City Staff, we'll support the project as is and hopefully it can move
super fast.
And there have been miracles before and if you build that they will come and I think they
can build it really fast and I've seen the staff work miracles before and maybe 27 could
happen, maybe it's not June, but maybe it's July or maybe it's, you know, the last week
of the season, maybe play a playoffs there in 2027.
And so I think, you know, I fully believe that the staff can work really fast and do some magical things.
Let me ask the question in a completely different way.
You're not planning on going to any other cities.
You're spec with callization.
You're here.
This is your home.
We want bombers and college stations.
I've lived in college station for over 30 years.
I'm not moving anywhere.
And the bombers will be in their home away from home in an episode of,
as they're happy to have us temporarily.
And it is closer than our old home at up north.
Thank you, Erie.
I appreciate your presentation statement.
Let me just turn back to Michael.
I think I saw a pretty strong consensus reflecting what best
Reancy direction was.
Is that enough direction?
Do you need more specifics?
No, I think that's it.
So we'll take City will proceed at looking at constructing the
Championship field.
We'll directly negotiate with Thomas Rogers and his team for the
remaining complex. And we'll also start the work on design for the utilities and infrastructure
for the site. Okay, it sounds like that's an agreement and everybody up here, so that's
good. That's your direction. Thank you very much. Thank you. Item 8.9 is presentation discussion
possible action on two deductive change orders related to Veterans Park Baseball Field Project,
the deduction of 266,586 dollars and 55 cents on the design contract with the pendulum studio LLC for design work and a deduction of $5,000 on the CMAR contract with Crane Group LLC for pre-concerction services, Ms. Kane.
Good evening.
These are the two changes related to the VPAC project and so these are just a formality and we brought to you all for your discussion tonight to close out the design contract with pendulum and then to close out the design or the construction manager at risk contract with the Crane Group for the Veterans Park project.
So I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Any questions for Mr. Gain?
Yes, Mayor.
Yes sir.
Mr. Nancy.
May I ask her questions, Mayor?
Tan General, too, or are indirectly related to 8.8?
Well, do they bear to 8.8?
Yes, sir.
Well, I will.
I'll thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm not sure how that would go, but.
Ms. Kane, we'll keep us afinked.
I will.
We just, I think, gave direction clearly that we would be building the championship field.
that did you understand it that way?
Yes.
And is that something as our capital projects professional that you feel like we can do and do efficiently?
Yes, we can.
And can you also help us with an assurance that the taxpayer can be backstopped to use a probably improper analogy?
In the unlikely event, I as one member of council don't think it's going to happen.
But our partner, that they're unable to successfully complete the larger section of fields would the city be able to backstop that step in and ensure that the taxpayers investment is protected by completing it.
I think that's not a question for capital projects, probably a question for either Mr.
the city manager, because I think it is germane to that issue if that's what you're really.
Yes, sir.
You didn't put it in your, you want to add that to the direction?
Yes, sir.
So I would say, I mean, looking at all the items we talked about probably fall somewhere
in the gray area of these, I think, Kane would tell you that we are more than capable building
baseball fields.
I mean, consider the fact that we were going to build other baseball fields.
we are building the championship field which would be the most complex one, so we certainly
have the capability. Specifically as it relates to what would happen in the deal, that's something
that obviously would be based on what council's direction and the resources that we put to it,
but all of it's within our capability is...
City, were it not to be performed by a private sector entity in this situation, or if just council had decided we want you to go build them? So we will plan from a worst case scenario to be prepared to make the taxpayer whole on the completion of the base by. For a worst case scenario is our total limo. Just what I wanted to hear. Thank you very much, Mr. City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. It looks like you've raised another question. Mr. White wants to ask.
Based off, I think the direction that Council has given tonight, moving forward with the
championship field, knowing that we're going to try to use the design from veterans.
Can you tell me, based off your experience, what other steps that will occur over the
next two and a half years until we open that facility that will come back to Council for
approval?
Sure. So, since, you know, if we are going to reuse the design from Veterans Park, the majority of it, as we've mentioned before, a lot of it can be reused.
But some of the initial steps we'll have to do is certainly get a new proposal, do a new contract with the design team.
We will go through another process to get the construction manager back on board to help us with this project.
Again, all after the funding is allocated for it, we'll have to do survey work, geotechnical work, and then restart all of the rest of design.
finish things out and get all the new components there, and then we would work with our contractor, they would bid it out, and then they would start construction.
And so, in that process, what point do you come back for Council for approval, whether it's approval for funds for the contractor, the design, how many more steps do we have as a council to make this fill to hold?
Sure, so for sure on December, I think it's the night for the capital budget meeting we'll talk about this again with some numbers associated with it similar to what we've already been talking about.
I think it's a second meeting in January. We'll have a budget amendment, which would include the additional funds most likely to discuss.
Then we would bring back, at some point in there, we'd bring back the design contract for Council for approval.
And then any guaranteed maximum price amendments for construction would come back likely there'd be more than one.
We'd have probably a site package and then the actual construction package so at least at least four or five more times to talk about if not if not more we could certainly provide updates during the I think every six months or so we do capital updates. It would be part of that process as well.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Okay, on 8.9 we're talking about the deductive changes, any further comments?
I don't know what signed up to speak on this.
They're laid out here, the reason for that I think are pretty clear.
Any further questions?
I would move approval.
Motion made by Miss McLean to approve.
Second.
President.
Second.
Mr. Hancy, second by Mr. Hancy.
All of those in any further discussion.
Guess not, apparently not.
All of those in favor of the approval of the deductive change orders is outlined in 8.9,
signify as saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries unanimously.
Thank you very much, Miss Kane.
Okay, Ms. Smith, we have 8.8.10 presentation discussion possible action regarding resolution
nominating candidates for the browser's appraisal district board of directors.
We had a letter where there you are, I'm sorry, right where you need to be, thank you.
Yes, we received a letter.
This is a resolution nominating a candidate to the appraisal district of Board of Directors.
Susan Pessel was nominated by City Council and her term expires December 31st of this year.
She is willing to re-reserve and so we just need a motion for that resolution.
Okay, Chair, well, any questions?
She is, she drew a one year term, so she just barely got the one year, so she wants to continue.
She's talked to me and she's applied for it, so Chair will entertain a motion to approve that.
I move approval.
Second.
Motion made by Ms. McLean is seconded by Mr. Yancey to approve the nomination of Ms. Pessil.
Mr. Peswell, yes. Susan.
To the Central Paraisal District Board of Directors.
Any further discussion? Seeing none, a whole of the favour say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. I will note
that she nominated but that doesn't mean she's elected.
No, I'll come back in December.
Now does this whole council have to vote?
We got a certain number of votes based on our tax roll.
Yes.
You want the whole council to vote on that?
It will come back in December at that time where you'll make that vote.
All right.
We'll talk about it then.
Thank you.
And you're still there, of course, because we have another item 8.11, presentation discussion,
possible action regarding appointment, the appointments of the impact fee advisory committee.
Yes, sir.
Smith.
Yes sir, we have received applicants for each position and we actually didn't receive any more than what is on the screen here and before you on the tally sheet.
We do have two P and Z members that you will have to choose between our vote on, so we just need a motion for these individuals.
Remind me why we have add what why are there isn't an ad hoc?
That usually means by virtue of their position they're on the committee, but
these are
I think that was a definition that was provided in the state legislative
terminology. I think that's what's guided all of this the ad hoc members are just basically they're unaffiliated with some sort of
Entity so in this case we have two members of PNZ plans on a commission two members
You've got four members that have to be from the real estate development or
builder community.
And then we called them ad hoc members in the previous IFAG.
We had two ad hoc members or kind of at large members, just a terminology thing.
Same difference, really.
But I think the terminology's wrong.
We don't need to change the tally sheets this time.
We can just make a motion.
The P&Z members are, there's two people who are willing to serve.
of everyone else, we only got enough applicants to fill the position so you could either
appoint now, you could wait to get more applicants to be clear.
If you just make a motion that includes everyone and pick one of those PNZ members, that's
it.
That's what I was talking about.
That's the point.
You got to pick one of those members and not all of us might agree on that.
So that's a problem.
Do you want, if you want to tell your sheets or do you want?
Okay.
If y'all just want to make a motion and y'all know who y'all want to share out, make a motion
if you're ready.
All right, please do.
I move that we accept the recommendation from staff
and any awaiting confirmation slot, PNZ member,
that Mark Chaloupka be selected.
I'll second.
Okay, we have a second for Mr. Smith,
any further discussion?
No, okay, no further discussion.
I guess we can proceed with that.
You heard the motion of the choice on the PNZ member
is meant Mark Chaloupka and all the rest is indicated by staff.
Yeah, I just want to clarify that you are you pick Mark and all the others yes, yeah, he all of those that were
Presented by staff, but of the two Mark Chalupka and we got a motion in second. So all of the favorites things by saying aye
Post
Motion carries unanimously. So do you have the information me? Yes. Yes, sir. Thank you
Oh my goodness, that's the end of the regular agenda. Item 9, items of community interest
and council calendar, you have the council calendar attached to the back of something
or another. Oh, I think it's the back of this list here.
And in front of you,
I will advertise
As November 17th, Mr. Rianci's Intergovernmental Committee meeting, the guest speaker will
be Mr. Astralisky talking about Calle Station development plans and strategies, right?
Yes sir.
All of that?
Okay.
Any other comments on the items?
Notice that we meet on Monday the 24th.
If you don't already have that on your agenda, please make sure it's on there.
I believe that's a 4 o'clock meeting unless we decide in executive session that we need an earlier start.
I guess the only other item that I want to bring up here is to note the passing of one of our esteemed former mayors Gary Halter.
I think everybody is already aware of that.
That's tomorrow afternoon at 130 and 1207 Texas Avenue our event space over here will be a celebration of his life.
I hope that all of you will consider what Yuri has done for the city and if you're available you might want to attend that celebration.
I know the family would very much appreciate it and I think we have a different ways already express condolences to the family but I'll add mine.
and son both are along with their families are certainly thinking about Gary and all
if he has meant to them and certainly we remember what he's meant to the city so thank
you all and now move on to anybody else got anything for community input item 10 the council
reports on committee boards and commissions?
Okay, no updates there.
I would say I would say I attended a successful board meeting for the Art Center of the
Razzas Valley and we had a successful bike pet in Greenways advisory board meeting since
we last met.
And I guess I would add that internal committees, let's see, yesterday we had the compensation
We had a great discussion, looks like staff recommendation on which way to proceed was accepted by the subcommittee.
The full council be informed by the city manager what that issue was, nothing to lose any sleep over but had to be made before the end of the year.
Future agenda items, a review of standing list of council-generated future agenda items.
Mr. Wright.
To one of the things that we learned from TML that a different city does is they have
a state of the city address, and I'd like to explore an option of doing that.
I don't know if this needs to come back as a workshop or whatever, but I think sometime
time after strategic planning, maybe in March, to have a sort of open house where perhaps
departments can be here for citizens to ask questions and then after an hour or so of
open house we can have a state of a city address where we as council or the mayor can lay out
sort of what we learned as strategic planning and put it out for the citizens to hear as
a means of transportation and transparency sorry it's late and as a way to kind of lay
the groundwork for what we intend to do through the rest of the year.
So I don't know how that can come back if everyone's in a green so that's something we can
explore.
You're really speaking of an event beyond the published year in review or whatever it is
that CMO puts together.
There is already a publication that would be part of that I assume but you want to go
beyond that.
What does council think about that?
Do you want a future agenda item?
I don't know that can we we could probably outline it strategic planning or something?
I mean I don't do we need a whole agenda item for I'm sure I just didn't know
a better avenue to bring it up room yeah I mean we can certainly discuss I
mean that strategic planning we can come and staff and say here's kind of some
options and if you tell us bring it back that way we can or we can have a workshop
about it whatever you all want to do yes we just direct staff to come up with
And I plan on how to do that, but you're talking about an event beyond that.
And you communicate some of your ideas to them about what you think that event looks like.
Is that good enough direction?
And you can come back parts with some options and, right, thank you.
Yes, you have another?
Yes, you know, with tonight, the event of tonight was us looking at the Wyndham track.
I became aware that there is a allowance or is permitted by state law that we can require a supermajority vote of counsel to overturn a unanimous vote by PNZ.
So if they make a recommendation to deny something that is unanimous, it would then take a supermajority vote of counsel to overturn.
and I think our PNZ works really hard and does a lot of good work.
Are you suggesting that that is already state law?
State law permits municipalities to adopt that as a ordinance.
I would have to look specifically, but I know we have not adopted it.
I do believe it is an option.
Correct. I'm saying that I personally would like to see that come back as an ordinance
for us to review and hopefully approve.
Anybody else interested in that?
I generally like that idea and was accept
because of what you brought up during that discussion which is
we saw it as we pointed out a couple times earlier
things change a lot between
And sometimes between P and Z and us, and you're not voting on the same thing. And I don't think that that's fair either. And it's part of it. So, I mean, there's nothing like investing a lot of good time, energy and effort and feeling like a test canary in the mine, just to see what changes need to be made before it moves forward. And we probably should wait to debate this. Yeah. And it comes back. I was going to say if you, if you would like to debate this, then we put an item one. It doesn't indicate whether council
is in support or against it but we could certainly bring back information and you all can discuss it.
I would second adding it to a future.
I see two people that want to have that.
I'm trying to add it in. I just want to talk about it.
I see three people that want to have that discussion.
Okay. We got a majority of the council members that want to have that discussion.
So we'll add that to the future agenda.
item.
I hesitate to ask for any more because I don't really want any more, but
we still
got an executive session to return to. Are there any further comments before we recess
the regular meeting and go back to the executive session? Seeing none, we are in recess until we
We return from executive session.