Professional facilitation services
Bellaire City Council set Feb. 8 as its date for interviewing two candidates for professional facilitation services — Lyle Sumek Associates and Ron Cox Consulting.
This comes as the council is in the beginning stages of its process to hire a new city manager since Paul Hofmann resigned Aug. 2. Assistant City Manager Brant Gary was appointed Aug. 3 to fill that role in the interim.
The firm would take the City Council through interviews and exercises designed to align council members on what they would look for in a new city manager.
Lyle Sumek Associates out of Palm Beach, Florida, and Ron Cox Consulting out of Friendswood were two of five proposals received by the city of Bellaire, according to meeting documents. Lyle Sumek proposed between $28,000 to $35,000 for between 100 to 124 hours of work, while Ron Cox Consulting proposed a fixed fee of $6,435 at $195 per hour.
The interviews will give the City Council an opportunity to request paring down the scope of work.
Zoning specifications review
Bellaire City Council voted to refer to the Planning and Zoning Commission a review of specifications for commercial mixed-use, urban village downtown and urban village transit zones.
Specifically, the commission will be tasked with reviewing multifamily use, minimum and maximum building heights, setbacks, and lot coverage in those zones.
“After seven years of new zoning districts for CMU, UV-D, and UV-T, a timely review of these codes should be done now by P&Z and council,” wrote Council Member Catherine Lewis, who submitted the item to be on the agenda.
A major impetus for the request comes following an announcement from Randalls Bellaire that it will close Feb. 20. Randalls Bellaire is located in the UV-D zone. A second consideration is the completion of the new H-E-B and the redesign and narrowing of Spruce and Fifth streets.
Interlocal agreement
As part of the consent agenda approved unanimously by Bellaire City Council, the council pushed through an interlocal agreement between the city and Harris County of a payment of $25,000 to be used for operating and maintaining The Nature Discovery Center at Russ Pitman Park.
The money is a donation from Harris County Precinct 3 when it was helmed by former Commissioner Steve Radack.
