Faithful readers will know that I have been harshly critical about proposed transportation plans that are nothing more than road plans. And as long as transportation plans are based on the assumption that the private automobile is the only viable mode of transportation for Kyle residents, we will continue to have to deal with such issues as burdensome road construction and maintenance costs, traffic congestion, air quality issues, mass transportation demands impossible to satisfy and sustainable neighborhoods. It’s literally getting to the point where a family’s overall costs for driving and maintaining their automobiles rival their housing costs.
Finally, however, the folks at Lockwood, Andrews and Newman have made a valuable contribution to the city’s transportation planning efforts even though it appears it is buried in this Tuesday’s City Council consent agenda. I’m really hoping someone on the council will pull this item because it needs further discussion.
Although the item in question reads adoption of LAN’s Transportation Plan, the accompanying materials reveal that the subject is, in actuality, an inventory of the city’s sidewalk network. And what that inventory reveals is … well, rather revealing.
For example, if I read the map correctly, it appears that one of the areas of Kyle that should promote walkability more than any other, namely the area downtown on either side of Center Street, is an area that appears to be completely devoid of sidewalks. That’s criminal. If there is one area of any community that needs to promote walkability, it’s the downtown area. Not just the one street through the heart of downtown, but those streets surrounding it.
Kyle needs to prioritize its downtown area as one for commercial redevelopment as well as new business development, but that development is never going to happen, i.e. Kyle is going to have problems extending its commercial tax base with new small businesses, if it doesn’t make its downtown area completely walkable.
Not only that, walking is easy, convenient and a healthy exercise, especially for old fogeys like myself. My dog and I try to walk at least four miles a day and those walks are far easier and safer in places where there are sidewalks.
I am hoping the City Council will use this valuable piece of information — for once, an addition, addendum, whatever you want to call it to a transportation plan that actually deals with issues other than automobility — as an outline for planning the much needed transportation alternatives our city needs to make us more sustainable, more liveable, healthier and more of a target for business development, especially in our downtown area.
I say this knowing that if this item is pulled from the Consent Agenda it will make what appears to be potentially one of the lengthiest City Council meetings in the 18 months I’ve lived here even longer. I’m tempted to show up to City Hall Tuesday not only with my pen, pad and recorder, but also with a sleeping bag.
First of all, there’s going to be the second public hearing on the involuntary annexation and I’m expecting the same cast of citizens who spoke at the first public hearing to come back and make exactly the same complaints again. This is not to question the validity of those complaints. Far from it. But you have to admit hearing the same complaint voiced over and over again can get tiresome, especially if you don’t have a dog in that fight, and you realize this repetition is going to result in a meeting that could last until the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
The agenda lists three presentations that will take place even before the public hearings begin which means it could be close to 8:30 - 9 p.m. before the council even begins to consider any action items. And toward the end of the meeting, there is another conversation that’s scheduled to take place on whether to adopt a storm water utility; whether the city should enter into an agreement with the county on road/guardrail/drainage repairs (This discussion could involve the level of quality between the city and country’s repairs, although that seems to be addressed in the agreement.); replacing the current Verizon phone system the city uses with a cloud-based system that is too complicated to explain in detail in this space but you can learn more about here and one that will cost significantly less than the Verizon system; along those same lines, moving the city’s servers to a cloud-based hosting system even though the company providing this service has experienced troubling volatility in the performance of its stock; and a quick glance at the Executive Session listing doesn’t fill me with much hope it will be brief.
Now, having said all that, there is one other item I would like to see pulled from the consent agenda and that’s the one that has the city paying Texas State University no more than $2,750 to "conduct a citizen’s (sic) satisfaction survey for the City of Kyle." Sure, I could be smug and wonder what the criteria is going to be to select the citizen for the survey, but I am assuming that’s the City’s grammatical error and not a statement of fact. (Hope. Hope.) But what I would really like to know is what exactly are respondents going to be quizzed about. Is this a survey to measure the satisfaction of residents with City services. Or is it a survey to see how satisfied we are by the number of restaurants we have in town, or the condition of the roads, or how satisfied citizens were with the UIL realignment or the Academy Awards?
It does appear that this will be another one of those surveys what will be sent out with water bills which means that this will be another survey of homeowners only and not all residents of Kyle. What a lost opportunity.
I have the feeling, however, this is more of a Texas State-driven student project than it is a city-driven survey, especially when you consider the price tag. According to the accompanying materials, the students are supposed to present to the city no later than Aug. 31 (1) a bi-lingual survey instrument on citizen satisfaction (of what, I have no idea); (2) Statistical analysis of survey results; (3) A report on aggregated regional results; (4) A report on City specific results; (4) An executive summary of results; (5) Content description and summaries of each survey topic; (5) A comparison of results based upon benchmarks of participating cities; (6) Profile of each city surveyed; (7) Profile of survey respondents; (8) Overview of survey research method; and (10) Copy of survey instrument. That’s an awful lot of ask for $2,750, but I still would like to know what it’s about. What specific information does the city hope to obtain from this survey? I think that’s an important question to have answered and that’s why I’m hoping this item will also be pulled from the consent agenda.
Like I said, I may be bringing my sleeping bag anyway.
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