The Arlington City Council convened in a special meeting on September 3, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. The meeting included an executive session for real property and economic development negotiations, followed by an open session with presentations on the Comprehensive Plan Element: Economic Development Strategic Plan, a University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) update, and discussion of informal staff reports on traffic safety, regional mobility, the CAPER report, the FY2025 budget, and future agenda items. No votes were taken; all items were for discussion only.
Comprehensive Plan Element: Economic Development Strategic Plan
UTA Update
Traffic Safety in Arlington
FY2024 City Council Priority - Enhance Regional Mobility
Community and Neighborhood Development - Program Year 2023 CAPER
Fiscal Year 2025 Budget
And boy, it grew and grew and grew, and it's a what a mighty oak now. Let's look around. One word to describe Tom Vandergo. I think I would say visionary. Visionary. Optimistic. Driven. He was far seeing. A true leader. I would say hero. I think he was a hero to a lot of people, and and certainly to me. Everything optimism. We can do it. You know, that. And it was always we. We can do it. That was that was who he was. He never saw things as they were today. He saw things as he thought they ought to be. And could be. Nothing was impossible to him. He was driven with the thought, I want to make Arlington great. And he did it. Leaders, true leaders only come around about once over four or five generations. True leaders, and he was one of those those kinds of pretty people. Tom Vandegriff, that's like a hero of mine. And to so many people. And not just because of baseball. Yeah, that that certainly had something to do with it. But just because the kind of human being that he was, and that never changed. That never changed through it all. He didn't talk about himself. He didn't take credit for anything. He just did things for the common good, uh, certainly for the city and for the people that he cared about and loved, but never asked for anything in return. I mean, he he just gave so much of himself time and time again for until the day he died. And I mean I think I think that's how people remember, and that's certainly how I remember him. When the Rangers beat the hated Yankees. When they beat them in 2010, my dad was here. He was in the city suite as a guest. My son Parker and I were there. The confetti starts raining. We're going to the World Series. I remember seeing World Series flash up there, and you know, he's sitting with us. And that was just a it was just a powerful moment to you know to see that, you know, here he's um kind of a shell of himself of what he was, but when we were finally getting World Series baseball here, and unfortunately he never got to see the World Series because that night, that very night, he went to where he was. We had assisted living and somebody taking care of him. He went to the bathroom, he could get around on his own, he slipped and fell and broke his hip. But I went to the hospital when I was there with him. He he liked to do a fist pump. That's what he always did. And he fist pumped, and he said, the Rangers won.