HUTTO, TX, November 5, 2008 – With a healthy dose of positive citizen feedback from their Wednesday night “pin-up” of work in progress, Hutto’s consulting team hunkered down to fine-tune proposals for a presentation at 6 p.m. tonight in City Council chambers.

For an overview of the process so far, the response from citizens, and what to expect next, click on the video below:

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Tonight’s City Council presentation will include a partner project, a master plan and coding exercise for the Old Town section of Hutto by another planning team. For an explanation of that project, click here. While the two efforts moved on separate tracks, the teams kept in touch throughout their work to make sure their proposals are complementary.

Although the work citizens and commissioners will preview tonight is designed to set new standards for development in the Hutto area, many folks will see familiar themes. That’s because the consultants spent the first part of the four-day workshop listening to citizen concerns. For a look at citizen reactions to images of old and new development in the region, go here. The design team took those concerns into consideration in their early drafts of plans.

One of the adjustments to the model code the consultants begin with is a recommendation for larger-than-usual setbacks in some residential areas. “We’re doing this code for you,” says Susan Henderson, project manager for the PlaceMakers consulting team. “So you get the setbacks that make sense for Hutto, and that you’re most comfortable with.”

Citizens also told the team that they would like more greenery in future development, so the team is customizing proposed regulations to suggest the kinds of trees appropriate to each development zone. For more about the philosophy of the code at the core of the new regulating approach, click here.

A special bonus project of the workshop has been a preliminary master plan for 800 acres on the south side of Hutto. Property owners for adjacent lands put the site on the table as a demonstration project to illustrate how proposed regulations would shape a new development. Citizens will see the plan as part of the closing presentation tonight.

After tonight, Hutto city staffers will get a chance to edit the code farther and to get even more citizen feedback before putting the proposals up for adoption, probably early in 2009.