Garland on the Rise: A Plan For The Next Decade

In this episode, Mayor Dylan Hedrick and City Manager Mike Betz dive into Garland on the Rise, a strategic plan designed to guide the city over the next decade. They discuss why the plan matters now, the priorities guiding it forward and how it builds on Garland’s commitment to deliver for residents through thoughtful investment and long-term planning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to Fifth and State, your inside look at everything Garland unscripted. Join Mayor Dylan Hedrick and dive into the topic shaping our city. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Welcome back to Fifth and State, where we take you behind the scenes of how Garland works. Today's episode is going to be a little different. So instead of bringing in an outside guest, I'm sitting down with our city manager Mike Betts to talk about something that will shape Garland over the next decade, our new strategic plan. Welcome, Mike. Welcome, Mayor. Thanks for having me. Yes, and you know, we uh on council just passed our Garland on the rise, our new strategic plan, and really a big step forward for our city. It's not just about one project or one single budget, we do that on council talk about the next upcoming budget for just one year. This is a plan that's really a long-term future of our city over the next decade. So before we get into all the specifics of that kind of thing, if I'm a Garland resident listening to this right now, why should I even care about this long-term plan? We do plans all the time. We do aquatics master plans or hike and bike trail master plans or library plans or parks and records, we even have a master plan for our fire department.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Why should we care about this 10-year plan? Well, that's a great question because we do all those plans. The the plan, the Garland on the Rise strategic plan, is really about one thing. It's about keeping Garland a place that works for the people who already live here and for call at home. It's about maintaining the services that our residents have come to expect over the years, and it's about maintaining quality of life in the neighborhoods. So those are the primary goals of the plan. And it's also about about what our residents pay for and how they pay for it. You'll see when we talk later about the plan that the one of the goals of the plan is to shift more of the tax burden away from our residential taxpayers and more towards our commercial and sales tax base. And that's one of the things the plan is designed to do. And it's not it's not an abstract uh document, it's a it's an actual plan to make sure that ten years from now we can still provide the types of services that we provide today. The the 911 calls, keep the water safe, make the streets, streets that are drivable, uh, make sure the parks are running, make sure the libraries are running, the cultural arts are still available for the residents who live here.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

So you mentioned a few things, talking about all these services we're trying to maintain, but also shifting this tax burden. So let's get in it. What is the actual problem that this plan is drafted to solve? And and then again, you know, many of these plants they just go up on the shelf. If we don't do anything with this plan, then uh what's going to happen to Garland in the future?

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah, that's a good that's a good question. The the the actual problem we have goes back uh it probably goes back decades, but the most recent part of the problem goes back to 2019 when the legislature passed uh uh Senate Bill II. And uh under Senate Bill Two, the legislature said that the most a city can raise its revenue in its operating budget is three and a half percent. Well, if you think about it, Mayor, we've had uh years in the past five years with eight, nine, ten percent inflation. And so that means every year there's less money available to provide the services we provide our residents without a tax increase. Because if they say, well, we can only raise three and a half percent revenue and costs go up by seven, eight, nine, ten percent, that's less money that's available for the services that we provide. I say it goes back longer because we're also a fully built-out city. And as a fully built-out city and an inner ring city that was built a long time ago, the way housing is used today and the way housing uh was designed back in the 1970s and the nineteen sixties when much of Garland was built out is quite different. And that creates a subsequent problem with respect to our housing market. And so the strategic plan tries to solve both of those problems. That is, it tries to solve the problem of how do we in a city where our revenue growth is capped at three and a half percent maintain the same level of services when the prices of a lot of our input materials have gone up much greater than three and a half percent.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Our costs are going up all over the place. We're limited by Senate Bill two, or three and a half percent, but our costs are rising much more than that, seven percent, even more in some cases.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Right, right. You think about the kinds of things that we do as a city, you know, homeowners are aware, most of the residents are aware, of what inflation has looked like over the last uh five to seven years. You know, you look at the the years where we had ten percent, nine percent inflation, each of those years we're capped at three and a half percent. And it's things that, you know, residents buy, we buy the same things, but then we buy things that are different than residents, that have even higher costs, and the costs have gone up on some of the streets that we build, for example, the the road construction and the co cost of concrete and the cost of buildings and the things that we build here in our city, that's gone up substantially, way more than three and a half percent a year.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

In my job as a civil engineer, the price of rebar and concrete, it's gone up twenty percent or more in some cases for some of my projects.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

It's crazy, just in a year. Yeah. Some of those. Yeah, and and and then we have other expenses. You mean think about what a fire truck cost, you know, five years ago versus what a fire truck truck costs today. Some of those are doubled in price. The cost of the technology we use, the cost of even the playground equipment and the uh parts that we need to keep our our uh facilities open and to to make the city hall uh air conditioning work. HVAC equipment is through the roof. And you look at at the things that we need to to maintain our pools and to maintain our uh athletic fields, those are all take machinery and those costs have all gone through the roof. And so unlike families who, yeah, a lot of their budget is food and residential, you know, their housing and their utilities, our budgets are tend to be things that have gone up even higher in price than the the costs that we've seen, and yet the revenue that we're able to uh uh uh obtain from uh our tax dollars has been limited to three and a half percent. So any year that those costs go up more than three and a half percent, that means we can do less for our residents. And really, you know, as I explained to the council during our meetings, the math will drive our choices going forward, or the city can decide, and the council and the community can decide, no, we're gonna forge our own path. We're going to uh come up with a plan that will allow us to determine our own course to solve this problem. And that's the path of Garland on the Rise.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

So if we uh choose in this path, how do the residents get involved? How do we do this? How do we you're thinking about a family who's lived here for 30 years, or maybe I'm a I have a young family, I just moved to Garland. What is the payoff for them? What are they going to do? How are they involved in this plan? What's going to be the payoff of this plan for them?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Sure. I think I think the number one uh uh payoff for them is that the core services that that residents have come to expect here, the parks and the libraries and the cultural arts and the things that make Garland special. Our weekly bulk trash pickup. All of that stuff gets protected and is well funded. That's the number one goal of the plan, the is to make sure it's not an afterthought in the plan. And the number one goal in the plan is to make sure that we reorganize what we're doing and how we're spending money and what we're doing for our for our future to be able to protect those core services. I think beyond that, over time, I think that this plan, if it's successful, will mean less taxpayer load on the homeowner. That is, today roughly 60 percent of our revenue comes from residential properties. That means residential taxpayers make up sixty percent of the total money that the city collects. And forty percent comes from commercial and sales tax. If you look at other cities, a lot of the newer, uh more successful cities, that is flipped, and sixty percent comes from commercial and forty percent comes from residential. If we're successful in this plan and revitalizing some of our commercial corridors, then you would expect sales tax to increase and commercial taxes to increase, which will lower the burden on our residential uh homeowners. The other thing that I think residents would see right away and or or over time, uh, and it's gonna be something that the residents will be concerned about, is visible improvements in the neighborhoods they live in. One of the uh goals of the plan is to improve the quality of life in those neighborhoods to spur economic development in the corridors. So you'd see better corridors, better gateways into our city, and neighborhoods that people are proud to live in. When you drive through them, you say, wow, this is a really nice neighborhood. And I think that's one of the things, you know, if you talk to residents who've lived here for 30 years, they've they've noticed a decline over the last several decades in some of the conditions in the neighborhoods. This plan is designed to address that so that uh people can live in a residential area that they're proud to call home. Uh finally, I think, you know, you talk to residents and I know they're really excited about the HEB and the Joe Vs that are coming. Those are the kind of projects that that residents want. Well, to attract those projects, we have to do some work in our corridors, have to do some work in our adjacent residential neighborhoods so that those developers would feel comfortable siding here. And so that's the the kinds of things that we look for in grocery stores, nice restaurants, those kinds of amenities, they're more likely to develop here if we're successful in improving our corridors and improving our adjacent residential neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

I know we've slipped a little bit, but there's still a lot of pride in our neighborhoods. There is. And people talk to me, I've I've lived here for 40 years, I lived here for 50 years in Garland, and they love their neighborhoods, but this is about just taking it to the next level there, kind of harnessing that pride, uh getting them to give back into their city. I know there's a lot of whenever we have a natural disaster, people come together like no other in Garland to help their neighbors. And this is part of that plan is harnessing that energy and putting those people to work just to improve these corridors, improve their res their neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Absolutely, Mayor. And and you know, it's it's one of the things that really um sparked our imagination when we started to develop this plan is we realized that the volunteer spirit and the spirit in Garland and the pride that people who live here have in Garland was something that would work in our favor. And and we look at our residential neighborhoods, and we realize that some of these neighborhoods, some of these folks who've lived here for 40, 50 years, they're older and they're not as able to take care of their properties. And that's partly led to the decline, is that people are just older, they might be a single person now, they had a whole family there, and they're the last parent living in a home, and their children have all moved out and they're on a fixed income, and some of the maintenance that would need to be done has slipped over the years because they're just physically unable to get out and do it. Well, part of this plan is to try to figure out how do we help those people improve the conditions in their property so that it brings the whole neighborhood up. And and part of the uh strategy to do that is to harness the power of the volunteers that we have and some of the community partners we have who are also interested in improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods and to bring it up. And when you bring the quality of life in the neighborhoods up, then the adjacent commercial corridors, the potential developers who would cite there, look at those areas and say, Wow, this is a place that I should cite a business because they look at the adjacent corridors and they see uh the opportunity to sell their goods and their wares and we'll develop in our commercial corridors. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

And that allows us to bring those businesses like the HEBs that we want and those, you know, uh what people ask you for all the time. You hear their names all the time when whenever they're uh either online or in person commenting. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Certain of their favorite restaurants. Why don't we have this kind of restaurant? Right, exactly. Well, some of those I think if you see some of the revitalization that we expect in our commercial corridors, I think you'll see some of those restaurants. I think you'll see some of those businesses, and that's that's the amenities that people have asked the city. You know, they always say, why doesn't Garland put a whatever restaurant here? A lot of residents don't realize we don't pick what restaurants come here, the restaurants pick who comes here. But by improving the commercial corridors and the gateways and making it look nice and making the adjacent neighborhoods, neighborhoods that are thriving, that incentivizes them to want to come here. It creates less risk for them as a business to site in one of those commercial corridors. And that's kind of what we're hoping for.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

It's about sending the right market signals in that case to get those businesses to come. You mentioned part of the strategy was harnessing that energy that I talked about, that pride people have in their neighborhoods, but also part of the strategy is these economic focus areas. Tell me what does an economic focus area mean? We're calling an EFA in the plan. What does it look like on the ground? Help me and help government citizens get an idea of what that is.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Sure, sure. An economic focus area is just a place. It's a corridor or a a series of strip shopping centers that are in some of our commercial corridors. And it's the economic focus areas are places where they've been identified by some of the economic consultants we've had to say these are places that have tremendous potential for redevelopment. And you could be talking about uh uh an aging shopping center that once was thriving and now has uh many emptied spaces and it's become run down and the parking lot is in disrepair and that sort of thing. Those are places we look at and say, wow, you could actually have some real economic development here, you could have some thriving businesses here, if we do a few things to improve the corridors, the sidewalks, some streetscaping, and that's what a corridor, that's what a focus area is. It's just a it's just a part of town where we've identified that if we uh make an investment there, a public investment, to improve those parts of the city, investors and developers are likely to come and build businesses and make those areas thrive. And that's the idea is not all not every part of the city right now is an economic focus area, but the idea is uh one of sequencing. That is, can we pick those areas that are most likely to give us return on investment, put money into those corridors, develop economically those areas, and then as they throw off sales tax and commercial tax revenues, use that money to move on to the next area until we get to the whole city.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

And he said sequencing, I mean some of these areas we can have to be specific about what areas we start with first and second. Those corridors, those economic, those uh commercial centers, at one time someone did take a chance on them, and that's why they exist now. We want to do the same thing. There's a reason why they're there, let's put some money back in, help them to become driving again, but we've got to pick the right ones at the right time, and you said that's driven by the data that our consultants give us.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Yes, they looked at the the housing in the area, the number of residents who live there, the amount of traffic on the roads, the conditions of the properties that we might be able to redevelop, uh, and the places where businesses are most likely to site. And they said, if you spend your money here, this is the place you're most likely to get the best return. And then that will throw money off as we develop commercial uh development and and obtain a sales tax base and a commercial property base in those areas, that'll give the city revenue to continue to sequence until we get to all parts of the city. And so that's kind of the idea. And and one of the things the the consultants cautioned us against and and presented and we discussed extensively at council was the risk that if you spread the money evenly across the whole city, if you had a limited amount of money to improve corridors, and instead of just improving the corridors that would be most likely to be productive, you decided you'd spend a little here and a little there and a little here and a little there. What they said is if you came back in ten years after you followed that strategy, you would expect to see no improvement. Whereas if you focus those in specific areas, you'll come back in ten years and you'll say, wow, those corridors are really thriving, and they're now throwing off money to allow other parts of the city to be redeveloped and reinvested. And that's the strategy. It's that you don't want to spread the money around so thinly that you don't see a result. And so by selecting those corridors that are most likely to be productive, it allows us to sequence through the whole city as opposed to spending all the money and having nothing to show for it.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

That's a temptation for council, I know, is that everyone wants to bring home the bacon for their own district and bring something home. But we want to be strategic about where we reinvest so we can start that virtuous cycle that'll spin that money off and come back and we're able to reuse that money again to do it again and again.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

That's right. That's the whole idea, is that is that there's some areas, and you can see this in the downtown area, you know, the a significant amount of money in public investment has been made making the downtown square beautiful. Well, that's resulted in substantial economic activity downtown. And one of the things the consultants identified as an area is they said, keep focusing on downtown. There's more to be yielded out of that. Uh to give housing options for people who want to live here and other businesses who still want a site here. And as you saw, Mayor, even you know, fifteen years ago when we tried to get businesses to come to the downtown square, it was really hard. Well, recently we had a property on the downtown square that we owned that we're looking for somebody to redevelop and and developers are literally climbing over each other, trying to be able to develop in a site where 15 years ago we couldn't get them to come here if we wanted to. Well, the idea is that by making a public investment in infrastructure and in uh in the areas that we have, it incentivizes the developers who look and say, hey, that's a place I can make money. That's a place I can cite my business, my fancy restaurant, my my uh type of business that will will be the kind that people are looking for, the amenities that people are looking for. And so by one of the the places they say is a focus area, they say keep working on downtown. There's more to be had there. They've identified some areas in the southwest corner of our city, down in the area in Shiloh and Kingsley, and some of the shopping centers that existed there that, you know, 20 years ago were thriving shopping centers that have fallen into decline. They say, look, there's there's plenty of residents there, there's lots of traffic there, focus there. Those are places where you can. They've also identified Lower Broadway. You l you think Broadway, Lower Broadway was once upon a time a thriving commercial area and has has fallen into disrepair because a lot of the shopping centers have aged out and they need uh to be revitalized. The corridors there need to be beautified to make to make the uh businesses uh incentivized to site there. And so those are the areas that we're looking at. There's another area that's another economic focus area that the council identified uh based on the data at uh Beltline and Garland Road. And that's an area where the the consultants have said, look, there's some there's some activity going on there, there's plenty of traffic there, there's residential uh neighborhoods there that would support those businesses. We can revitalize that area and turn that around as well. And so those are the areas that the council selected as economic focus areas that we'll look at uh over the next, you know, the first f five or six years of this plan as we get going.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Now, that is the first five or six years, and this plan is really going to be over a ten-year time period. It was for the next decade, is that so why should the citizens believe that we can actually deliver on promises we're making in this plan over the next decade?

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Well, I think that the you know, it's funny I was asked uh by one of the council members, I believe it was council member Tran, he said, well, do we have evidence that this works? And what other cities, you know, and the consultants are quick to point to Baltimore and the Inner Harbor and other cities, uh uh Des Moines, Iowa, and some other places where they've been successful with this strategy. And and my response and in my response today is I think you need look no further than the downtown square. You know, and in my first letter to the residents in the uh city press, I pointed out looking across the city square and thinking about how vibrant the city square had become. It was a Thursday night when I wrote that letter or Friday night, and I looked out and I marveled about all the people out on the square, and all the restaurants were full, and there were kids running around having fun, and there were families walking the square and shopping and eating in restaurants. And I thought, you know, if you came here 15 years ago, that would have been a much different picture. And that was a conscious result of the leadership of the council, the support of the community, and the efforts of the staff to coordinate over a long period of time to make this happen. And so we have a model and we've done it before. And that's kind of the message that I have for people who are skeptical. Well, is this really going to work? I say, come on down to the downtown square on a Friday night, tell me if it works. And you look around and you say, Yeah, it works. It works. When you make a concentrated public investment and you stay at it for a period of years, then the market responds and comes in, and now the downtown square throws off a whole bunch of money in economic uh uh money for the city uh in revenues and sales tax and commercial taxes. And if we do that in all of our curridors, we'll start to move the balance from the 60 percent residential, 40 percent commercial to be the 60 percent commercial, 40 percent residential, and reduce the burden on our residential taxpayers.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Uh, I think, you know, downtown's great proof of what we've done before and we're trying to do again everywhere else. The 2019 bomb program, it's 90 percent complete now at this time. It's really different from previous bomb period packages. The 2004 bond just drove out over years and years, but we are moving fast now, and that's the same thing we plan to do with this plan is really implement all of the recommendations, focus on those economic focus areas, and try to re revitalize our whole city.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah, one of the things that I tell people and I talk to developers about is you know, the time is really right here because we've put a almost a billion dollars on the ground between uh 2019 and uh the most recent bonds. Yes, sir. And between those, I mean, almost a billion dollars in investment that the the public has voted to invest and put into our city. And that's a message to developers that the people of Garland, the residents, the citizens, the people who live here, are serious about wanting to redevelop this city and wanting to have the amenities that they uh have that would attract the type of people uh and type of businesses that we hope will be able to attract.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

So I my four-year four-year-old son, he's impatient. He doesn't like to wait. Citizens don't like to wait too long either. So this is a 10-year plan, but I want to see something now. What will I see over the next couple of years that'll show us that we're moving forward with this and making progress?

SPEAKER_01 22:42

That's a good that's a good question and a good point because people do expect things to happen right away. And I I think that the first year or two of the plan, I think you'll see visible corridor work. What does that mean? You'll see landscaping and lighting and signage and the beginnings of placemaking, kind of like what you saw downtown when it first started, started to look like someplace different than it was. And you'll see the placemaking type of things, the walkability areas around some of these commercial corridors. And that's what you'll see in the original corridors in the first year or two. Uh I think it would take probably between three and five years before you start seeing private investment and businesses look and see, oh, you've made a lot of improvements, and then come in and start developing businesses there. At the same time, while that's happening, I think you'll see significant improvement in our neighborhoods. I think you'll see some of the we intend to go out and work with the community and and get volunteers to help those who are either physically or financially unable to uh improve their homes. You'll see start to see a improvement in the neighborhoods adjacent to these economic focus areas. And so that'd that'll be in the next three to five years, you'll see that. And then I think in the six to ten year time frame, I think you would expect to see thriving uh business corridors in some of these areas where they had dormant shopping centers that were very l underutilized. You'll start to see shopping centers that become thriving and have the kind of amenities and businesses that our residents are looking for.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

That's great. I know everyone has some questions about this too. Uh the first question we always get is will this plan raise my taxes? Is it just a hidden way to raise taxes and cost me more?

SPEAKER_01 24:18

No, uh absolutely not. In fact, it's it's the opposite. The the whole point of this plan is to be able to continue to provide the amenities that our residents have come to be accustomed to without raising taxes, and by shifting the tax burden from our residents to commercial and sales tax, which is what uh reduces the burden on our residential homeowners. And so the whole point of the plan is exactly the opposite. If this plan, if we didn't have this plan and we just let the math do its thing based on Senate Bill II, we would be forced to raise residential taxes or cut the services that people rely on every day.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

And we don't want to do that. Either one of those are bad choices. They are. What about the resident whose area isn't first? We have these specific economic focus areas, we can only choose a few of them to begin with. What do I tell the residents that I'm not in here, I'm on a different part of town, when are you going to get to me?

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Well, I think it's it's twofold. Number one is the major corridor investments are a sequencing strategy. That is, we want to be able to make those corridors thrive so we can have money available in other parts of the city to uh improve those areas of the city. The second thing is even in the areas that aren't in the economic focus areas, you'll see part of what we're going to do is try to stabilize some of our neighborhoods and try to take the same efforts that we're bringing to improve the the streetscapes and the the residential areas and the corridor areas, whether they are in an economic focus area or not. Some of the gateways to our city, which run through our city and are at all parts of our city, even outside the focus areas, you'll see improvements there. Some of the neighborhoods, um, some of our legacy neighborhoods with some of our longest and most tenured residents that uh have older communities where the residents have lived there for 30, 40, 50 years and are physically unable in some cases to take care of their properties. I think you'll see improvements in those neighborhoods where the community gets involved and we've had a tremendous outreach from the community and say, hey, how can I help? How can I be part of this plan? I want to help. Well, we probably have more volunteers than we need just in the economic focus areas in some of our residential areas. And part of the plan and the housing strategy that was uh brought to the council talks about stabilizing some of the other neighborhoods. Can we stabilize neighborhoods that are in areas that we'll get to later so that they have an improved quality of life today? And so I think even if you're not in an economic focus area, you would expect to see some results. Uh probably not the type of economic activity you'll see in the corridors that were improving in terms of the business attraction, although I think you'll see improvement in quality of life in the neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

So if I'm not in one of these economic focus areas, are you going to be cutting the services you provide here? Am I going to get less code enforcement? Am I going to get less pothole repair because it's all going to these specific areas? Am I going to be left out?

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I think this the short answer is no. I think certainly there will be more focus in the economic focus areas uh for some of our resources, but we're setting resources aside specifically to make those available. That is, we're we're putting money into the economic focus areas specifically. We're not necessarily taking money out of the other areas. So the if you look at the budget that that uh um I'm gonna propose uh to the council next week, it's got money that's earmarked for this type of improvement. And so the that money will be used to spend in the areas that we're trying to uh develop in as economic focus areas, but that doesn't mean we're taking money out of the existing community. And in fact, one of the things that that that I hear residents ask about is, well, does this mean we're gonna have less services? And the the short answer is is it depends. Our hope is if the plan is successful uh in the next five years that we'll be able to uh stay ahead of the impacts of Senate Bill II. And the whole idea is by revitalizing these areas and throwing off commercial taxes that will help ease some of the tax burdens on our residents, that will allow us to continue to maintain the services in the residential areas, even away from the EFAs. And so, you know, if you're if you're a resident who enjoys the library, enjoys a park, enjoys one of our facilit many facilities that we have that provide amenities to our residents, uh the success of this plan is what will allow those things to continue. And so I don't think it would be fair to say that they'll see less. I think the whole point of the plan is to make sure that they continue to receive the types of services that they've grown accustomed to.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

So we're still maintaining public safety, still maintaining all those great services we provide, and we want to make those sustainable long term.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Right. It's actually the first point of the plan is to maintain core services. We recognize that as a result of the financial pressures that we've seen from Senate Bill II, it's become more difficult for the city to maintain core services. And so, as a plan, we come in and say, okay, plan job number one, we need to make sure we maintain core services. We try to keep the parks and the libraries beautiful, we try to keep police and firefighters on the job, we try to keep the amenities that our residents have come to enjoy in our city up to the standards that they are accustomed to despite the financial pressures that we face.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

So this will work if we get the community backing behind us, get the volunteers to go into those neighborhoods, help improve those. What are we asking the regular old Joe who lives next door to someone listening to this program?

SPEAKER_01 29:46

What are we asking them to do? Well, the this plan, and I I mentioned this to the council, this is going to take all of us. It's not just gonna take the council and the staff, it's gonna take the community as well. This plan works if the community is with us. And we're asking the community right now to do several things. First of all, stay informed. You know, look at watch the the website and look and see what are we doing and follow the work as it comes along. The second thing we ask the the community to do is show up and let the council know what their priorities are and come to the council meetings and the town halls so that their voice can shape the work that we do in the years ahead. Uh thirdly, we ask the residents, invest in your own block. Start at home, start with your own home and ask what can I do to make my home look nicer for the people who live in this neighborhood, make it a place that people can be proud of and a community that will want to attract residents and businesses so we can compete in the North Texas area. And then pitch in for other homes. You know, we've got many seniors and people who have financial struggles who need help. Uh and we're we'll be reaching out and asking, hey, we're trying to make some improvements in some of these neighborhoods. We need some volunteers. Can you come out and we coordinate work with some of our neighborhood stewards and some of our city employees and coordinate work and say, hey, we're gonna have cleanups here. We may help people trim trees back and help people with their their uh maintenance issues on their property so that the whole neighborhood can look better. And so we'd be asking uh our residents to uh invest in in their community uh together because it's gonna take the whole community to be successful. And and finally to carry this story to people in the neighborhoods. Tell people who maybe don't listen to this podcast or don't follow council meetings, hey, we're doing this this plan in Garland. We're trying to make this place beautiful and we're trying to make it economically successful. Get your neighbors involved and talk to one another about it. And and then we'll have the whole community behind us. And and one of the things that's going to be really important is to have the community. You know, that's what that's what made the downtown square work. It wasn't just council leadership, it wasn't just the staff, it was the fact that the community, both through their votes and through their actions, supported that project over a course of years. And if they do the same thing with this plan in some of our uh economic focus areas and our commercial corridors, I think you'd likely see the same result.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

I think it's a great plan going forward, and you know, it's really given us hope for the future. It's you know, we've debated Garland on the rise because we want to keep Garland on its upward trajectory that we've had after these great bond program and projects that we put on the ground, and and now it's time for both citizens and the the the new commercial businesses coming to our city, they it's their turn to take over.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Absolutely. And uh, you know, I as I told the council, we've done this before. We did it in the downtown square, and I'm confident we can do it again. And I'm confident that the pride that people feel when they come to our downtown square and look around and think, wow, this is beautiful, they can have that same pride in a lot of our other commercial areas, but it's going to take the whole community. And I hope the community gets involved in this transma uh uh transformation that we have. And if they do, as I told the council, a generation from now, uh Garland will look back at this community and this council and and this staff and remember that the rise of Garland began with us, everybody who lives here and everybody who participates in it. It's something that, you know, is is generational and touch of the work we're doing. It's going to change the trajectory of this city uh for decades ahead and make it a place where our children and our grandchildren will want to live.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

So I tell everyone why I ran for city council first and now mayors, because I've got three young children. I want Garland to be the best city for them when they grow up and they're my age. That's right. I have a few resident questions here uh regarding our plan. Uh how would this strategic plan affect street improvements?

SPEAKER_01 33:37

So we've got a the bond package, the most recent bond package had a substantial dollar amount, hundreds of millions of dollars for street improvements. And those street improvements uh will be part of the tailwind, if you uh if you will, the the thing that will help this plan be successful. So I would expect to see street improvements as a result of the bond package and the money that we're putting into the corridors and the entryways and the major thoroughfares that they're uh improving under the bond package, and some of the residential streets that were improving under our bond packages. And I would expect to see those uh come in the years ahead and that they'll work together with the strategic plan so that as we improve the streets and some of the curbs and sidewalks in some of these areas, you'll see the residential areas improving at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

And we already have hundreds of those projects available. We have a GIS website showing all of them across the city already set up, but with more to come over the next five years.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

That's right. If you look at the map, you look at all the painted streets essentially. They've got color paints on them where they're either in progress or planned and all that, and you look and say, wow, that's a lot of streets. And that's because that's what our voters asked for in the bond packages and said, hey, we'd like to see street improvements, and I think you'll see those coming.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

And now another question is what role does co-compliance play in this strategic plan, like cleaning up junk vehicles and vacant homes and that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah, you know, the the council in anticipation of this plan adopted uh civil enforcement program. And I know we had a podcast and talked about civil enforcement, but the the point of the civil enforcement program is to reduce the amount of time it takes from the time of a code complaint to a time when we can get that code complaint remedied. Number one, and number two is to identify those people who are unable to, either physically or financially, unable to make those improvements so we can get them connected with the help that they need. So I think code compliance is going to pay play a big role because it's gonna bring attention to the neighborhoods that have uh compliance issues and and some of those neighborhoods that have uh seen some decline over the last 20 years and try to help us identify who in those neighborhoods is unable to make the kind of repairs and to to make the kind of improvements they need to bring their property up to code compliance standards. And as I said, we have a plan to work together with a volunteer network I met today with uh some folks who want to be involved and volunteer and know how can I get involved and participate in the improvements that we'll see in our community. And one of the ways that we're gonna find out who these people are is through code compliance. The code compliance folks will go out and will identify violations on properties, and then the people who have those properties, if they can't make those repairs, are being asked, hey, reach out to the city, tell us if you can't comply, let us work with you and help you bring your property up to compliance standards. And that will bring the entire uh quality of our neighborhoods up to the quality that our residents expect.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

And one comment we received is how are we going to go in and revitalize these corridors? Are we gonna use eminent domain to take some of these properties? And I don't think we are at all. I think we're just gonna send market signals that allows the market to work and improve it because we essentially can't use we're via violation of law to use eminent domain in that case.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

No, we we the city will not use eminent domain for economic development purposes. It's prohibited by our Constitution. What you have seen in some areas is old abandoned properties the city has bought up and land banked. There's parts of town where there was um uh economic decline had occurred and there were businesses that had gone out of business, and there's lots and businesses where we've land banked some of those so we can offer them to developers and say, hey, here's a property where that's big enough for you to develop and create a synergy between the types of businesses that are here. That's part of it. Part of it is just improving the corridors and sending, as you said, market signals. When you improve a corridor and you you improve the the streetscape on either side of the street and you you uh clean up the adjacent neighborhoods and and um make them a place where developers feel like that they can be successful, then the developers come in and develop. But I uh do not anticipate and I would uh uh suggest that it wouldn't even be lawful for us to take properties by em in domain and have another developer come in and develop them. We don't do that in Texas.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

So one question here for both of us. Last question I'll ask is what are we looking forward to most uh seeing the change in the next year? Or what kind of changes would we expect to see in the next year? And I I'll begin. The first one I'm really looking forward to is having the citizens come together just like we do whenever we have a tornado or any other kind of disaster, those fast moving disasters. This kind of decline of our neighborhoods and corridors has been a slow-moving disaster over many years, and we want to harness the energy of uh just of the Garland citizens that come together in those same kind of events. And I know already we've purchased several trailers for use, much like we have our neighborhood vitality uh block party trailers, we now have Garland cares branded trailers with tools in there to allow people to use. So when we're out there on a Sunday or a Saturday working and helping fix up uh we'll have some actually some reach resources to use. And I'm looking forward to that kind of spirit coming back within the next few years.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Yeah, I agree. I you know that when you started to ask the question, that's the first thing that came to my mind, which is I'm really looking forward to the community involvement and the sense of pride that we have as a city when we come together. And and you know, uh you might recall I was the city marshal uh previously mayor, and and and I remember being out at a tornado, the tornado that was the day after Christmas back, I think it was 2015, and and they needed a bunch of extra law enforcement officers. And I went out there and had an intersection and worked in intersection at the tornado scene and brought people in and out, and the number of volunteers who showed up and just said, Hey, I want to help. There were so many volunteers we didn't even have work for all of them. There were so many people who came together, and to see that in our community and to see the way that our community comes together to solve problems is really magical. And it's something that other cities would be really envious of. And and that's that's one of the things that I'm looking forward to. That and then the uh the improved quality of life in our neighborhoods. You know, I I talk to residents at town halls and and at events, and they say, you know, some of the neighborhoods have declined over the years, and what can we do about that? And I tell them we have a plan, stay tuned. And I think that when you look back in a few years and you see the quality of life improving in some of these neighborhoods and have neighborhoods that people begin to have pride in and a sense of community in some of the neighborhoods, uh, I think that'll really be very rewarding for the people who live here.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

So what kind of message, what's the last message you want to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_01 40:21

I would say what I said a moment ago, which is, you know, let's do this together. Let's do this together as a community and uh and as staff here at the city and and with council's leadership and the community participation, uh, we'll look back someday and know that we were the people who made this happen, that the rise of uh Garland and the plan was successful because of the people who were here.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

The rise began with us. That's great. That's correct. Well, thank you, Mike, and thank all of you to listening to Fifth and State. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with one of your neighbors. This is a really important one, I think, and I encourage everyone to go look up the strategic plan on our Garland website. It's a great read, and uh, you know, it really sets a strategy for the next decade. So uh also tell your neighbors to subscribe to our podcast, Fifth and State. You can do it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. You can also check us out on YouTube, leave a five star uh rating and a review in the comment section. And until next month, I'm Dylan Hedrick saying goodnight, Garland.