City council members envision San Angelo of the future

San Angelo city council members are talking about the city's future -- not just the immediate days and months ahead, but the next twenty years.  And they're working to put together a written plan to guide the city through the next couple of decades. Joel Fox explains.

Change has become part of the routine in San Angelo in recent years -- from new businesses, to road construction, to new homes.  But rather than simply watching the changes take place, San Angelo city staff members are working on a blueprint for the city's future.  Over two days, council members are being asked to come up with their vision for San Angelo.

"You can't really get where you're going unless you know the final destination," says Shawn Lewis, city planning and development director. "So what we're trying to do today is to come up with a cohesive for where we're going and how to get there."

When we approached citizens about their wishes for the future, many of their ideas coincided with those discussed by council members. 

Longtime resident Doris Goodson says she would like to see more activities for children, "parks and facilities for tennis and soccer, things like that."

Parks are high on Emily Sides' list, too. "I'd like to see more parks, actually, in more neighborhoods, because I don't think we really have that many parks, big parks where families can go spread throughout the town," she told us.

Businessman Van Osborne says he would like to a lower tax bill in his future. "I would like to see the property taxes go way down.  That would be really great."

And those are just some of the areas council members are discussing as they try to envision what they want the city to become.

Planning director Shawn Lewis told council members the vision statement will set out goals in "broad strokes." And he says this will not be a detailed, specific set of instructions for the future.  Instead, he says, "This will help us to kind of tailor our efforts to really go in the direction the council wants us to go.
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Council members will discuss their vision for the future again at a special meeting of the San Angelo city council Friday (Sept. 28) at 9:00 a.m., in the meeting room on the fourth floor of city hall.