Cedar Park City Council discussed Thursday night options to allow the public to participate in the selection of a new city flag. The city previously unveiled a flag in early December at the holiday tree lighting event at Heritage Oak Park, but the design received backlash on social media and in council chambers. City Council voted Jan. 12 to reopen the process to select an official flag. At the January meeting the council decided to send the roughly 250 flag designs that had been submitted last year for consideration to the city’s Parks, Arts and Community Enrichment Board, which promotes cultural and recreation enrichment in the city. Council also requested city staff to make recommendations on the best process to hold a public vote for when the board narrows down the number of possible designs. Kimberly Reese, an assistant to city manager, presented council with a public input option Thursday night. Reese said staff aimed to develop a public input process that was fair, easy to for the public to participate in and provided meaningful data to help make a decision. She recommended allowing the public to participate in a survey online through the city’s website and in person at Cedar Park’s library, recreation center or utility billing office. Reese said the city should publicize the survey on social media to direct the public to the available locations and keep the survey open for two to three weeks. “We feel like that’s plenty of time for people to participate if they would like to, but it doesn’t slow down the process too much,” she said. She said Cedar Park residents and business owners should be allowed to participate in the process, and survey responders would need to provide their name, address and email address. Reese said the city should accept one submission per person, and responders could choose their top three flag designs and provide comments. Reese proposed a timeline to have the PACE board narrow down the roughly 250 submissions in February and have City Council review the narrowed submissions in April or May. Public input on the designs would be gathered in May or June, and results from the public input would be available in June. Several council members voiced their desire to gather public input on the designs before the PACE board narrows down the roughly 250 options. “Obviously our citizens want input,” Council Member Jon Lux said. “It’s going to be our flag forever; I think the return on investment is well worth the time to do an extra survey.” The council members took no action on the public input process. The next PACE board meeting is Feb. 13, and consideration of the city flag selection process is on the agenda.