In the wake of last year’s dueling parades, the city has been attempting for months to implement guidelines for large-scale gatherings. And this week, they will introduce a new ordinance that could do just that.
“The city needs an event policy (because) they did not have one,” said City Spokeswoman Stacey Osborne. “It has caused confusion, and it has made things difficult to decide how they are going to work with organizations.”
At the April 13 meeting, city leaders will hear the first reading of Ordinance 2023-15 that creates a new city event evaluation process, developed under the recommendations of outside legal counsel, that “reflects current state and federal laws,” according to city documents.
The proposed ordinance would evaluate all applications for gatherings of more than 500 people that require use of the city’s right of way or will have vendors providing goods and services by health and safety and general welfare, economic prosperity and fiscal impacts on the city with “content neutrality,” according to officials.
Late last year, the city found itself at the center of a controversy that resulted in two back-to-back parades after religious leaders and LGBTQ-plus rights advocates tussled over whether to allow drag queen performances in the annual parade.
Since that time, the city has been attempting to implement guidelines that would spell out the rules regarding city co-sponsorship of events.
“I think what they were going for is that anyone who wants to have an event can have an event,” Osborne said. “The issue is whether the city will pay for personnel and whatever items are needed to have an event.”
In other business, the council will consider moving forward with Randall Scott Architects, a Dallasbased firm with extensive experience designing municipal buildings, for the programming, planning, design and construction of a new City Hall and Justice Center to provide space for city administration, the police department and municipal court.
“Overall, the committee felt they had a lot of years of experience building this type of facility, good references, great examples from other projects, provided information that would make the building unique to Taylor and gave an overall great presentation that provided more details on various aspects of the project,” according to city officials.
At the meeting, city leaders will hear a presentation from Randall Scott, the firm’s founding principal, and Dan Brantner, the project manager.
Though the exact agreement has not yet been negotiated, the funding source for the project will be through a Certificate of Obligation and is expected to take about nine to 10 months for the programming and design phase.
“ I think what they were going for is that anyone who wants to have an event can have an event.”
- Stacey Osborne, city spokeswoman
