With the help of one of the Planning and Zoning Commission members, the Tioga City Council is looking ahead to prepare before more development makes its way to the city.
Dena Howard, who serves on the P&Z, compared the proposed revisions to the code of ordinances from the city engineer with the comments from City Secretary Donna Carney as well as county and state laws to create a draft for the council to consider.
'My biggest concern is that the tollway will be finished at the end of next year, so we are within a 12- to 18-month approach of everybody approaching our city,' Howard said.
Where the source material had more staff positions and more autonomy on the staff level, Howard worked to keep that in the council's hands.
'Our draft would keep it still to where [approval] needs to come before the council so that ... we can make the final decisions,' Howard said.
The starting document leaned heavily on the laws Celina developed, so Howard worked to make sure they reflected Tioga instead.
'There were ... positions that we don't have,' she said.
She also worked to change all references from Collin County to Grayson County.
The council members thanked Howard for the effort she put into the project, which Kurt Hall described as 'an incredible amount of work.'
The draft is still a work in progress, Howard said.
P&Z asked that the council and mayor look over the document and set a joint meeting to work on refining it together and ready to have Hayter Engineering look over again.
Preventing developers from taking advantage of the small town is the name of the game, she and Mayor Craig Jezek said.
'Substantially getting anything updated to be able to give the builders new handouts and being somewhat more protected than where old ordinance keeps us,' Howard said was her goal. 'Not that we can't make amendments or adjustments as seen fit along the way.'
The council also looked at the budget, and Jezek shared an opinion he said he never expected to say.
'I really feel like we're going to have to raise taxes, property taxes, and the only reason I'm saying that is because it may be one of the only times that we're going to get to do it in the future because of all of the tax reforms that's coming out [at] the state level,' Jezek said.
He also said that water and sewer rates will need to be increased as well.
'The water rates haven't changed since October 2023, and then sewer rates haven't changed since December 2022,' Jezek said.
The council set a special budget workshop for 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Also at the meeting, the council voted to approve a resolution about submitting an application to the state for the Water Supply and Infrastructure Grants as well as who can sign documents for that program.
The council also voted to extend the temporary waiver for sprinkler system requirements for Healing Springs Ranch.
