City Council discussed the 2018 Community Development Block Grant program during their June 5 meeting with insight from city workers and constituents.
The Community Development Block Grant program occupied the majority of the meeting with other agenda items focused on a Guadalupe Street improvement project and a new radar system for San Marcos Police Department.
The CDBG program has diverse applications for funding including Court Appointed Special Advocates, increased home-loans for San Marcos residents, Parks & Recreation Youth Scholarships, post-flood home recovery through the Blanco River Regional Recovery Team and renovations to Anita Reyes Park, Children’s Park and Southside Community Center.
Lynette Lombardo, CASA volunteer, spoke about her experience as an advocate for mistreated children and why she believes it is important to receive more funding as San Marcos grows.
With the rapid population increase of San Marcos, Lombardo and other CASA representatives who spoke before city council believe the increased population will result in more children in need of CASA care, therefore more CDBG funding.
In addition to the CDBG program, the Guadalupe Street Improvement Project was approved for an engineering and services contract for the project going to Maestas & Associates LLC. This project will be coordinated with TxDOT standards to add bike lanes, some sidewalk improvements and restriping the lanes in the hopes of making it a beautiful gateway to IH-35.
City Council also approved a contract with radar systems for patrol vehicles at $32,105.50 and more patrol vehicle equipment $80,863.28. An amendment to the meeting agenda was made because the two costs were listed under the wrong line-item under agenda item 3.
No vote was made on the CDBG program during Tuesday night’s meeting.
The next meeting will be June 19 at 6 p.m.