The city of Edinburg has concluded two major efforts to solicit feedback from residents for their 2040 Vision Plan.
Following four town hall meetings with residents and with approximately 1,700 respondents to their city-wide survey, Mayor Ramiro Garza Jr. said the city is now working on compiling the feedback they received to then implement it in their future plans as part of the 2040 Vision.
The city’s 2040 Vision, a pillar of Garza’s mayoral campaign, is meant to be a long-term plan based on community feedback on where the city should be by 2040.
“Starting in February, we had four town hall meetings and I want to thank each and every one of you that has attended to give us your input — the good, the bad, and what we need to work on,” Garza said during a city council meeting Tuesday.
“I just wanted to announce to the public that the next step is staff is working on putting together a report of all the input that we received and hopefully we can do that in May — if not, early June — and that will be presented here hopefully as part of a work session before our regular meeting,” Garza said. “After that’s presented to us, we now will have a list of our priorities so all of us up here will not have an excuse to say ‘what are the needs of our community?’”
Throughout the four town hall meetings, held at different locations around the city, residents addressed the oft-mentioned need for drainage improvements, repairs for streets marred by potholes, the need for better code enforcement, and lower taxes.
Before the commencement of the town hall meetings, Garza said the feedback they received from the meetings and the survey would be used to come up with an actual plan that the city will use as a guide when working on their annual budget.
On Tuesday, Garza added that he hoped to use that feedback to also restructure their advisory boards and committees.
“What I would ask the council to consider as part of that process is to, at that point, revisit our committee structure,” Garza told the council during Tuesday’s meeting. “We have a lot of advisory boards and committees. In fact, this evening we have 34 vacancies that we need to fill.”
He added that there were nearly 50 people who applied to serve on those boards and committees but reiterated that as part of the 2040 process, they would revisit the committee structure.
“I’m hoping to revamp that, perhaps create new ones or add to those that we have, just to address some of the needs that have been expressed to us by all of you,” he said.
More information on the city’s 2040 Vision plan can be found at edinburg2040.com.
