During Tuesday morning’s meeting, the Brownwood City Council by unanimous vote authorized City Manager Emily Crawford to solicit request for proposals for a Downtown Comprehensive Plan.

The City of Brownwood is seeking a qualified planning firm or team of firms to provide professional services for the development of the City of Brownwood Downtown Master Plan.

The City of Brownwood’s last Downtown Plan was completed in 2002/2003 by Freece & Nichols, which contained a 20-year action plan that expires in 2022.

The purpose of the Downtown Master Plan is to develop strategies, guiding principles, and action plan that will assist the City of Brownwood to further enhance our downtown district. The Downtown Plan should: establish a guiding vision for the downtown district; provide ample opportunities for stakeholder engagement; analyze the commercial, retail, and residential markets and identify needs and opportunities; analyze zoning, and land use needs, based off the analysis, complete a site-specific development opportunity analysis for the most impactful opportunities; recommend and prioritize strategies and projects for place-making and public spaces; and provide a plan for implementing recommendations.

Included in the deliverables of the plan would be an assessment of current infrastructure and future infrastructure needs of downtown Brownwood, action-oriented recommendations to implement that vision, identification of a series of near- and longer-term public sector catalyst projects to help keep private sector momentum moving in the right direction.

Funding of the Downtown Comprehensive Plan will be through American Rescue Plan allocation

Also during Tuesday meeting, the City Council voted to hold public hearings on the tax rate and budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year, a period beginning on Oct. 1, 2022 and ending on Sept. 30, 2023, on Aug. 30 at 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. at Brownwood City Hall .

The Brownwood City Council also voted for Mayor Stephen Haynes to serve another term on the Texas Municipal League Health Benefits Pool as the Board of Trustees representative for Region 6. The City Council first nominated Haynes on July 26. Other candidates included Cisco City Manager Darwin Archer and Clyde City Secretary Connie Thornton.

The City Council also voted to approve the Mayor and Emergency Manager to sign the updated Brown County Emergency Operations Plan.

Updates to the plan included:

• Information from current plan and entered it into VEOCI Template

• Updated personal contact information in Basic Emergency Plan

• Information from Annexes were inputted into Emergency support function format

• Added Animal Response information from Agrilife- County Agent
• Updated MOU- Red Cross

• Updated Health Facilities information

• Added Brown County Haz Mat Mitigation Plan- 2019

• Updated organization charts

• Updated Census information

• Updated Local utilities, Critical and Key Facilities lists

• Added Brownwood PD 24 Hour Terminal Agency Agreement

• Added Texas DPS-FBI Criminal Justice Information Systems Agreement

• Added Brownwood PD Dispatch Agreement

The City Council also approved a negotiated settlement between Atmos Energy Corporation, Mid-Tex Division and Atmos Cities Steering Committee. With the settlement, natural gas prices are expected to increase $4.60 per household and $14.34 per business.

The Budgetary Control Report for the period ending July 31 was presented as well. The report represents 10 months of the fiscal year, which is 83.3% complete.