Council puts final touches on city long range plan

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today
Darren Dunn

(Seguin) — The plans for Seguin’s future are now officially in place. The Seguin City Council on Tuesday approved the final reading of an ordinance that adopted the city’s new comprehensive plan. The plan looks at every aspect of living, working, and playing in Seguin. It provides a vision for the future, and a plan for the steps that need to be taken to get there. 

Seguin Mayor Donna Dodgen says she’s thankful for all the citizen input that went into this plan. She says this plan will serve Seguin well for generations to come. 

“You know, we haven’t redone this since 2008 and we’re in a totally different spot. We’re in a totally different place about growth, and where we want to go. This helps create a pathway that we can utilize. We can look at setting budget dollars, setting priorities and move in that manner. We can look at it and renegotiate it and move it where we need it to be. It is a plan. It is a road map,” said Dodgen.

City Manager Steve Parker says the comprehensive plan sets some clear guidelines for Seguin, but he says the plan is also flexible enough to allow the city to be both proactive about the things that people want to see in the future and reactive to situations that might require a little more nuance for some projects or strategies. 

“And I think the key thing there is us getting the community’s input of what they wanted and what they wanted to see as far as development goes in our community. So, we looked at everything, and this is a document that will guide us through. We’re such a fast-growing city — one of the fastest growing cities in all of Texas. We really needed to have that input from our community about what they want to see. What do they want our subdivisions to look like? How do they feel about affordable housing? How do they feel about walkability, (and) how they want the boulevards and their streets to look?  All these types of things are very, very important when you’re changing this fast. One thing I found from the community is that they’re okay with growth because they know some of the benefits, where retail and commercial (projects) come with that growth. They’re tired of driving to San Marcos and New Braunfels for date night. They want to do that here. But they want to grow smart. They don’t want to have all those other negative aspects that other communities faced when they grew. That’s really what the goal of this whole project was, and I think we’ll maybe accomplish that in a lot of ways with staff and with the leadership we have with our city council. I’m very excited about how we can take that plan and use it for the benefit of our citizens and give them the Seguin that they deserve,” said Parker.

The comprehensive plan will help to shape the city’s future for the next 20 to 30 years. It looks at several quality-of-life issues, including parks and economic development. It also calls for the city to develop some smaller area plans that can specifically address some unique areas in the city, like the West Side neighborhood and an area along North Austin Street between the railroad tracks and Kingsbury Street.  Copies of the new comprehensive plan are now available on the city’s website, seguintexas.gov.

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