City kicks of comprehensive plan

The city on Wednesday officially kicked off its comprehensive plan SA Tomorrow, with plans for a major public outreach effort over the next year.

The city has been working on comprehensive, transportation and sustainability plans since last fall, but city staff will start to gather public input on the plan, in the coming months.

The first major public meeting on the plan will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 11 at the San Antonio Independent School District’s Alamo Convocation Center, at 110 Tuleta Drive. John Dugan, the city’s planning director, said officials hope SA Tomorrow will involve even more people than SA 2020, an initiative launched by former Mayor Julián Castro to execute a new vision for the city.

All three plans should be done by next year.

A complete website for the initiative, SATomorrow.com, will be up by late this week. The city has also launched a social media campaign, using the Twitter handle @SATomorrow2040 and a Facebook page at SATomorrow2040.

Officials expect about 1.1 million new people to live in the region by 2040. About half of those will be people who have moved here from other places. The city’s goal is plan for where those people will live, how they will get around and how the city could possibly encourage them to live in San Antonio’s existing footprint rather than all the growth continuing to occur in the outer suburbs.

“SA Tomorrow is the answer to that,” said Mayor Ivy Taylor, at Wednesday’s press conference.

vdavila@express-news.net

Twitter: @viannadavila