Late last summer, when Tom Yantis first appeared on Taylor Talk with Jason Hennington, his official title was assistant city manager and director of Development Services.
This time around, the second half of his title may be gone, but the role Yantis is playing in the Samsung Austin Semiconductor economic juggernaut is as critical as ever.
“I stay busy, and that was one of the reasons we had this reorg in the works for a while,” said Yantis, who returned to the Taylor Press May 8 to chat with the newspaper’s Area Editor Jason Hennington. “The amount of time that it is taking to supervise that Samsung Project is a lot, as you might imagine, and I needed someone to kind of handle everything else that is happening in the city from a day-to-day standpoint.”
Recently, Colin Harrison, the former assistant Development Service, was promoted to director of Development Services, in order to fill that role.
“He (Harrison) has oversight of all of the day-to-day operations of all of our development services functions, which includes planning, and code enforcement,” Yantis said. “He reports to me, and so I have development services, and I have the Main Street program with Jan Harris as the Main Street manager. I also have Internal Services, which is directed by Nicole Oman, and that is our Fleet Services (for vehicles), our Building Services and Information Technology, and I also oversee the team that we have put together for the Samsung project for all the building permitting inspections for Samsung.”
Since Yantis first began working in Taylor in 2018, he said has seen a tremendous increase in the volume of development activity.
“When I first started, I use the gauge of single-family residential permits issued as kind of a marker for volume,” Yantis said. “In 2018, I think we issued maybe 45 residential permits, and then this past year, there were over 250 permits for single-family, so you know, that’s a significant increase in the volume of development activity because with the increase in single-family residential permitting activity, we are also seeing an increase in commercial and industrial permitting. And then, with Samsung, that was the biggest game changer of all, and in 2018, no one had that on their radar screen, so it’s a lot of change.”
While Yantis said he is not the only city administrator overseeing the new Justice Center planned to house the Taylor Police Department, municipal court and administrative buildings, he did reveal its future location to Hennington.
“That will be going in downtown Taylor on East Second Street So, Second and Washburn (streets) between Washburn and Elliott (Street) and Second and First (Street) is the property that the city is acquiring.”
For an overview of hundreds of new apartment units going in on the city’s north side, as well as other residential and commercial developments that are in the works for Taylor, watch the latest edition of Taylor Talk at www.facebook.com/ GoTaylorTx.
