The Bellaire City Council will meet Monday September 14 to consider the city’s immediate financial needs, and to set policies that could affect Bellaire’s future.
The City Council meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m., will include consideration of a $27.5 million 2010 fiscal year budget that represents a 1 percent decrease from current city spending.
Bellaire started cutting back city spending this year, as revenues started to slide in the current economic downturn.
The municipal budget is based on a tax rate of 37.75 cents per $100 property valuation, the current tax rate now paid by Bellaire homeowners.
The budget would freeze city hiring for all but public safety personnel, such as police and fire fighters. That would leave about 12 open city positions unfilled.
Bellaire City Manager Bernie Satterwhite recently said the budget would allow the city to maintain current levels of services.
“We have a lot of expectations in Bellaire and we are going to continue to meet those expectations,” Satterwhite said
The Bellaire City Council also is scheduled to consider scheduling a public hearing on a proposed comprehensive plan update that was recently approved by the City of Bellaire Planning and Zoning Commission.
The commission’s comprehensive plan would incorporate plans for a “transit-oriented-development” of shops, condos or townhomes linking Bellaire’s northern boundary to Metro’s University rail line station near S. Rice and Westpark. That plan would redevelop the City of Bellaire’s Research, Distribution and Development District, which has failed to attract much new business to the city.
The plan also provides for possible ways to bring more high-density housing to Bellaire, as possible retirement homes for the city’s aging population. And, the plan calls for redevelopment and revitalization of the city’s sagging downtown area.
The City Council’s agenda suggests that the public hearing be held on October 12, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. at the Bellaire City Hall at 7008 S. Rice. The issue of the hearing is whether to replace the city’s older master plan with the new, 97-page document, which was developed after a citizen’s advisory committee and planners from the Kendig Keast Collaborative made recommendations to the planning commission.
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