TYLER, Texas — The City of Tyler is growing, especially with the boom of businesses, hospitals and education.
In 2007, the Tyler City Council voted unanimously to approve the creation of the Tyler 21st Plan, now known as Tyler 1st. It is a comprehensive plan that gives Tyler a direction for goals, projects, policies and action items.
Every five years, the city of Tyler updates the Tyler 1st Plan to check the goals and plans for the upcoming years are being met or updated.
Tyler has been working on updating the plan for 2020. Earlier this year, there were three open houses for people to come and provide input on topics like downtown revitalization, historic preservation, parks and recreation, transportation and housing and neighborhoods.
“We're putting all of that feedback together and looking at our plan and trying to determine what kind of goals and policies and action items need to be updated to address those," Tyler Managing Director Heather Nicks said.
During the Dec. 11 City Council meeting, Nicks presented the council members with a progress report on how the update was going.
She spoke of the strengths found for the city including a younger population, new schools and college programs and continued growth as the healthcare headquarters of East Texas.
Nicks also talked about the challenges facing Tyler since the last update in 2014.
She says some of the issues the steering committee found are the lack of transportation options, poor traffic signal timing and online shopping lowering the demand for local jobs.
One of the top priorities she listed to the council members from the community’s feedback was traffic congestion.
"The good news is we are in the middle of a traffic signalization study," Nicks said.
Other priorities included the revitalization of North Tyler, attracting more regional flights to Tyler and preserving the city's trademark brick streets.
"We also heard back from the community that wants to see more property maintenance standards incorporated into our codes," Nicks explained.
The rough draft is anticipated to be completed by February or March. Nicks says there will be another open house for people to come and give feedback.
The updated Tyler 1st plan is expected to be finished by April.