City presents a look back on 2020 to the Chamber of Commerce

Dripping Springs Mayor Bill Foulds, Jr., City Administrator Michelle Fischer, Deputy City Administrator Ginger Faught, and Senior Planner Amanda Padillo, presented a look back on 2020 to the Chamber of Commerce last week during the Chamber’s monthly luncheon.

Among the many accomplishments Mayor Foulds touted during the presentation was the city leading the Austin Metropolitan Statistical Area with 54 percent growth, which was no surprise to anyone in attendance. During 2020, Dripping Springs issued 933 residential building permits and 68 commercial building permits; annexed 34 acres; and accepted public street, drainage, and wastewater improvements in nine developments.

While the growth isn’t projected to slow down anytime soon, Dripping Springs residents will recall that in December at least 300 acres of land adjacent to the Headwaters Subdivision was donated by Dick Rathgeber for parkland use. In a previous press release Mayor Foulds said, “As Dripping Springs continues to grapple with high rates of growth, access to, as well as conservation and proper management of public land, becomes vitally important to the health of the Texas Hill Country.” He added during the presentation, “That amount of parkland is unheard of for a city of our size,” Foulds said. “It dwarfs Zilker Park.”

Another major donation the city received in 2020 was a 38,000 square foot add-on to the Dripping Springs Ranch Park Event Center from the Hays County Livestock Board, which cost more than $2 million to construct. The added space is already in use and was utilized during the November elections to allow people to vote in a socially distanced area.

Financially, the city is also in good shape. Dripping Springs brought in $7,100,000 in revenues and $6,200,000 in expenses. The largest source of income came from sales tax, jumping to $3,068,376.00 in 2020 from $2,722,119 in 2019, an almost 13 percent increase.

With all the talk of growth, questions continue to arise in community forums on social media about traffic. The City is currently developing its Transportation Master Plan.

“Some goals of our transportation plans are to meet the future mobility,” Padillo said. “We want to improve the connectivity within the city limits and the ETJ. We want to identify some future alignments and right of ways, as well as leverage available funding for transportation improvement projects that will aid in efficiency and safety.”

The City will host a Town Hall in March as part of the planning process and make changes before presenting the Master Plan to the Planning and Zoning Commission and later to the City Council.

Finally, worthy of a mention is the City’s receipt of the muchneeded wastewater expansion permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). This permit represents the culmination of a long-term vision and goal of the City to lessen the reliance on groundwater and treated surface water for irrigation. With the expansion to the City’s Water Reclamation Plant, many new and existing developments in Dripping Springs will instead use the reclaimed water from the plant to irrigate open spaces, parkland and landscaping. The City is currently in the easement acquisition and design phase for the expansion.

For more city updates, you can view the full presentation at cityofdrippingsprings.com/ page/article/316.