Results of the January 23rd meeting

Mayor Don Baker opened the meeting at 5:30 pm, and Mayor pro tem Gil Lillard gave the invocation.

Then the time for visitors to speak came, and there were two who chose to.

Pete Peterson came to say "thank you" to the City staff and Council for helping Woodway be a great place to live. He went on to describe his candidacy for Justice of the Peace. Checking this out later, I found a You Tube video here. I do not know Mr. Peterson personally, and this does not constitute an endorsement. But he strikes me as very likable person, has many years with the Highway Patrol, and I appreciated that he made the effort to speak at the meeting.

Then Parnell McNamara came to say that he is running for County Sheriff, and feels that his approx. 33 years with the U.S. Marshal's office was good experience for the job. I checked around some and found this and this on You Tube. Again, I do not know him personally, but he seems to me to be a very impressive person, and someone I think would do a good job as Sheriff.

Next came Jed Walker to make a second presentation on the proposed Colonnade apartments project (adjacent to the Hollywood Theaters). I blogged about this after the December 12th meeting (see here). At that time, the Council was concerned about a portion of the land in question being reserved for planned commercial development, and also that adding more rental property to Woodway was less desirable than individually-owned properties. Mr. Walker described a few changes, mainly that the plans had been re-worked to leave the section mentioned above as planned commercial. This required decreasing the number of units from 277 to 240. I asked how developing for individual ownership (rather than rental) would influence the project. The answer was that market research had shown that there was nowhere near a demand for 240 condominiums in Woodway. Then four major figures in the area (Linc Harris of First National Bank of Texas, Dr. Michael Thrasher, Dr. Mark Barrett, and Dr. Everett Watson) came to speak in support of the project. In particular, Dr. Barrett stated that the project would afford convenient housing for the medical staff working at Providence. The Mayor then polled the Council, and six of the seven were in favor of the development, largely because it was so well planned and would be using space surrounded by unsightly Waco industrial areas. Mayor Baker remained against the proposal because (a) a new zoning type would have to be developed to allow this, and (b) the project goes way beyond the currently allowed density of six units per acre (this project requires about 16 per acre). This presentation was intended only to get a sense of the Council's level of support for the project, and did not result in a vote of any kind. Given the Council's support, the City Manager will proceed but with some caution.

Then was a quarterly financial report by Financial Director William Klump. This covered the last quarter of 2011, and there were "no surprises". Revenues are in general up somewhat, including sales taxes (which had taken a hit in the past year or so).

Then was a quarterly report on the Arboretum by Janet Schaffer, Director of Arboretum, Tourism and Recreational Services. Arboretum rentals had been about the same as last year, with 89 events (52 of them paid rentals) in 2011.

At that point I had to leave the meeting to get to a commitment at Baylor. If you are interested in the remaining agenda items, there is audio of each meeting posted a day or so later. (Added 1/26: the audio is available here, along with that of all the earlier meeting for the past year or so).