(Seguin) — Seguin City Manager Steve Parker has been on the job for a little more than a year, and he is already getting high marks from the city council. Council members recently met behind closed doors to conduct Parker’s first evaluation. The council gave him a huge vote of confidence, and also a 2.5 percent pay raise. That falls in line with what other city employees got this fiscal year.
Parker says they have accomplished a great deal over the last 12 months. He says he’s pleased with the work of his staff, and he says he has worked to develop a good working relationship with the city council. Building that relationship, however, was made a bit more challenging after the November general election. That’s because half of the council changed due to term limits. But, Parker says the new council members have hit the ground running, and good things continue to happen in Seguin.
“I felt that ever since I’ve gotten here and when you get a new council and they come on board, you kind of worry about that that is going to be big change for a city council when you get the possibility of four or five new council members and the new ones have stepped in with their feet running and just the same energy and same support is amazing. They know that we are going to grow. They just want to grow smart. They really believe in this team that we’ve had here and so when the citizens trust the city council, then the city council trust the staff, you can do a lot of amazing things and makes me really proud of what we’ve accomplished just in this first year even with some crazy pandemic stuff going on. We were still, I think, high producers and I think that shows in the evaluation and in some of the remarks from the city council – they acknowledge it was a crazy year, but they are also really proud of everything that we’ve done,” said Parker.
Calling 2020 a crazy year, is a bit of an understatement. Parker says no one could have prepared for all the challenges that were brought about by this global pandemic. But he says he is proud of how Seguin is handling this situation, and knows that things will continue to improve as more people get protected from the virus.
Parker says while they were reacting to the pandemic, he was also working hard to try to get to know his staff, the community’s needs, and the people of Seguin.
“My main goal starting this year was really the outreach related to getting to know the community, getting to know all of the players, getting to know the issues, getting to know the needs of the departments and the staffing, kind of get a better idea of what the work mentality was around here, the work history all of that kind of stuff – really try to engage myself in the community and in the staff and just get to know them better and build a level of trust there with them that hopefully will pay off for years to come but great support from the council, all positive comments. We are going to work on some goals for next year at visioning. We are going to be visioning in February or March of this year and kind of layout some expectations of what direction this new council wants to go and from there, we will develop new goals for the following year. That will all kind of be my standard of what to go by and be evaluated on the upcoming evaluation,” said Parker.
Parker says he’s looking forward to what lies ahead for Seguin. He says the city’s new budget provides funding for some strategic planning to be done. These plans will help to map out the city’s future for years to come.
“The big thing for me this year was just the development of this budget – this five year strategic plan that we are working on – looking at what our needs are going to be not only for this year but you know three, four, five years out and making sure that we have the capacity to do that. So, this was my first year really of going in depth with the budget and figuring out what we needed, what the city’s needs were and formulating a plan that I think will take us through the next several years,” said Parker.
The strategic plans can’t be done in a vacuum. That’s why Parker says it’s going to be important for the community to be involved in that process. He says there are some important decisions that need to be made about what people in Seguin would like in the future, and how they need to get there.
“Getting funding for a comprehensive master plan that will kind of dictate where and how we grow and what the expectations are from the community. There will be a lot of community involvement with that project as well as the downtown master plan. There’s a great asset there in the downtown related to all the positives. You are starting to see some of that, great shopping, getting some quality restaurants down there, some things for people to do so we are going to start the downtown master plan in conjunction with the overall comprehensive master plan and that will kind of dictate all those areas that we need to focus on and then we’ll follow that up with the transportation master plan which I think is everybody’s major concern is that if we are going to grow and we are going to add these many houses in our community, how are we going to keep up with traffic and transportation and I keep hearing we don’t want to turn into what some other cities have done when they’ve experienced major growth and you have bigger growth and you have these backlogs, traffic jams and so forth. We are trying to think ahead a time five, 10, 15 years down the road of what it will be like and so those projects will be key to making sure we have a clear path moving forward,” said Parker.
Mayor Donna Dodgen says the council is thrilled with the work that’s been done by Parker thus far. She says council members gave incredibly positive feedback to the city manager and they feel like the city is moving in the right direction.
“His performance has been incredible. A couple of his goals were to be really engaged and to learn about our community and to be engaged with the employees and he has done that phenomenally even in this environment of COVID. He’s also handled the COVID situation well along with continuing his duties in moving us forward. Everyone has positive things to say. There wasn’t anything negative. The employees had positive things to say about him. He really has been working and trying and I think he’s engaged and that’s really important. He’s handled some delicate situations with some council members and their constituents apparently and he’s just done a phenomenal job. He is not afraid to ask people questions and when they are not happy, converse with them and that’s what we want and what we need,” said Dodgen.
Dodgen says the council later this year is expected to tackle a visioning process in preparation for some of the planning work that lies ahead. She says this will be important in developing a clear pathway for the city to move forward.
“The council as a group, we are going to get together. We are going to vision at some point in time when COVID allows it and look at where we want to go and how we want to get there based on the plans as a litmus test and we are going to set goals for him next year. Actually, he is going to set goals for himself next year and we are going to look at that at evaluation time,” said Dodgen.
Parker was hired last January from the city of San Marcos, where he served as assistant city manager. Parker’s 2.5 percent salary increase will push his annual salary up to $246,000.
