By Colin Killian, Public Communications Director
In this week’s episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Public Communications’ Grace Hallowell and Neighborhood Services and Community Relations Coordinator Taitelyn Morris discuss the City’s monthly Seminar Suppers, where residents can gain valuable insight into city services and operations, including the annual budget, capital projects, and more. The next one is Tuesday, March 25, at City Hall.
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If you have a suggestion for a future topic or interview, email me at ckillian@cstx.gov.
TRANSCRIPT
Grace Hallowell:
What’s Up College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today I’m joined by Taitelyn Morris-Wise, our Neighborhood Services and Community Relations Coordinator. We want to do a little overview and an introduction for our viewers and our listeners for what Neighborhood Services is because not every city has a Neighborhood services department.
Taitelyn Morris:
Yeah. So Neighborhood Services is a really cool division within the City Manager’s office. We do a lot with our new residents. We do a lot with our student population, as Grace was mentioning. We do a lot of new resident welcome bags. We put all of these together. So if you have new neighbors coming to town, make sure you welcome them to your neighborhood by coming by and getting some swag for them. They’re free. Just swing by.
Just come by the City Manager’s office and come pick them up. We do the Seminar Suppers, which we’ll be talking about a little bit later. We do a lot of community programs alongside the Seminar Suppers. We do the Community Living Course, which is a lot of student-focused sort of things. We helped host the Christmas parade, which was very fun to do. We’ve done it for the past two years. And we just do a whole ton of other stuff. Anything that you throw at us, we are basically, “Game on.”
Grace Hallowell:
You mentioned the Seminar Suppers, so let’s kind of give a general overview for somebody who may not know what is a Seminar Supper?
Taitelyn Morris:
Yeah, so Seminar Supper, the name implies exactly what it is. It’s a seminar and a supper. All kind of wrapped in one. Yeah, it’s straightforward. So I like to describe Seminar Suppers, we host them monthly. They follow just a whole bunch of different topics.
I kind of have broken them up into four different categories when I’m explaining them. We kind of have yearly topics. So we have our capital projects update, we have our budget update because those are things that we have them every year, they change every year, but they are something that they are the same. We will always have capital projects happening. We will always have the budget happening.
But they change every single year. We have new initiatives that always happen. So our Housing Action Plan. That’s something that is brand new to the City of College Station. And so that’s something that we have hosted a Seminar Supper on. We have program highlights, so we have a whole ton of programs that the City of College Station does that sometimes they just need a little bit of love. And so we will host a Seminar Supper on that. So one of the program highlights that we did last month’s Seminar Supper on was our city’s Traffic Calming program.
So our Traffic Engineering Division within our Public Works Department, they have a whole program that will evaluate traffic calming measures that can be done within the neighborhoods at the neighborhood’s request.
Grace Hallowell:
So these Seminar Suppers are a really great way to kind of get a demonstration on a topic that may be a little confusing or overwhelming, all while enjoying a great meal.
Taitelyn Morris:
Right. And so it’s just a really cool way to kind of show the City of College Station to our residents because we know there’s a lot going on. And it’s one of those ways that we can break down that barrier between local government and our residents because we want our residents to know what we are doing as the city.
Grace Hallowell:
So what is the cost of the Seminar Suppers?
Taitelyn Morris:
So that’s actually also a really good question and it is free.
Grace Hallowell:
Yay. We love free. And where can people learn more about the month’s topic and RSVP?
Taitelyn Morris:
So on our city’s website at cstx.gov/neighbor, there is a tab on there that has all the information. As far as the dates for the Seminar Suppers, we host them on the fourth Tuesday of every month with exception to August and December. We do not have Seminar Suppers on those days. But as far as the topics are concerned, we post those in the neighborhood newsletter, which we send those out on Mondays and you can sign up for those on cstx.gov-neighbor. That link is also attached there on the same sort of page. And so all of that information is there where you can sign up and all of that good stuff. And then the March Seminar supper is coming up.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes, it’ll be here in a few weeks. So what is the topic for March’s supper?
Taitelyn Morris:
Yeah, so March Seminar Supper is on March 25th, so the fourth Tuesday of March. The topic is Five Years Forward. It’s a look at the city’s comprehensive plan, which is done through our city’s Planning and Development Services Department. The comprehensive plan, it serves as a roadmap shaping the decisions for our land use, our infrastructure, and our quality of life. So all of the planning decisions that are made, that’s shaped through the comprehensive plan. We update that plan every five years.
We have to make sure that it’s useful. We have to make sure that reflects all of the changes that have been made over the last five years. We have to make sure that it reflects how we still want that land to be used. And we have to evaluate that to make sure that it still does what we want it to do.
Grace Hallowell:
Still serves us and our residents.
Taitelyn Morris:
Right. And so, our Planning and Development Services Department, they do a lot. They are so smart, so brilliant. And they’ll be coming in, they’re kicking off the evaluation of the plan, and they will be starting that with the Seminar Supper and they’ll be kind of discussing what the comprehensive plan is, discussing how you can plug in during this evaluation process, discussing everything regarding the plan, how it’s used, all of that good stuff because they are way smarter than me and they know so much more about everything with this land use and everything.
Grace Hallowell:
Smarter in a different way. We all have our own special gifts and abilities. But, yes, this is a great way for something, especially like this, these plans, there’s a lot that go into them. It’s a lot of words, it’s a lot to digest. So they will be breaking it down for everyone to be able to understand, ask as many questions that you may have. So yes, this is the perfect opportunity for that.
Taitelyn Morris:
Yes, I did want to say that the registration, we close that the Wednesday before the Seminar Supper happens. So the registration closes on March 19th. However, just because registration closes does not mean that you can’t show up day of. That just means that I might not have food for you. If you show up day of and you didn’t RSVP, you’re free to stay.
Grace Hallowell:
Bring your own lunch or bring your own supper.
Taitelyn Morris:
Bring your own food. Or just wait till the end, and if there’s still food, then feel free to grab some.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Taitelyn. It’s been great working alongside you here. I’m happy to finally have you on the show.
About the Blogger
Colin Killian has been with the City of College Station since 2010 after serving 23 years as the associate media relations director for the Texas A&M Athletics Department. He has also worked as a reporter and editor for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and Lewisville News. A native of Hobbs, N.M., Killian graduated from Texas Tech with a bachelor’s degree in journalism/political science.
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