Sherman city leaders sat down Thursday to hash out the priorities and needs for the upcoming budget season during the annual city council budget retreat. The annual meeting, held each summer, allows the City Council to discuss needs and potential projects that could be included in the budget later this fall.

Here are five things that the Council discussed during this year’s retreat.

1. Sherman? There’s an app for that

Among the first projects discussed Thursday was the implementation of a new mobile app for all things Sherman. Community and Support Services Manager Nate Strauch said the city is looking to subscribe to a service that will allow residents to access a port for information on the city and report issues they encounter within Sherman.

“It is an app where it will be like My Sherman or Sherman Showcase,” he said. “You download it and you can go through everything you could do on the website. You can pay your water bill, you can look at city directories, stuff like that.”

The app will have two innate functions that will allow for communication between residents and the city. Through this, residents will be able to report issues throughout the city.

“So basically, you can go geotag the pothole out in front of your house and submit a request to us to get it filled, and we can extend that same type of service to a number of different city departments,” Strauch said.

Another function will allow the city to issue alerts to residents who have signed up for them. The system will allow for residents to choose what kind of alerts they will receive.

“It is opt-in only, so people get to decide what notices they want to be sent, and it really will give us a tool to communicate with citizens that we don’t have right now,” Strauch said.

2. Sherman continues work on new vehicle service center

The construction of a new $12 million service center for city vehicles may be among the largest new projects on the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. City officials have discussed needed improvements to the facilities used to maintain and repair city vehicles during the past three budget cycles. However, scope changes delayed the project until now.

“Unless we get strong opinions from the council otherwise, we want to start construction on a new service center over kind of by where our other facilities are on East Street by where the trash department is,” Strauch said.

During last year’s budget retreat, the city presented plans for the development of a new service compound that would house multiple city departments. However, the project came with an estimated cost of $40-50 million.

Instead, the city is proposing to focus solely on the vehicle service center for the time being with the potential to consider other facilities in the future.

“It gets our service center guys out of the rain,” Strauch said. “Right now, the service center they have is so inadequate that they can’t pull some of the fire trucks and trash trucks inside the building. So, if it is raining, they just have to work on them outside in the rain.”

3. Fire stations continue to be a priority

Facilities discussions also focused on the future of two fire stations. City leaders discussed the future location of Fire Station 5, also known as the northside station, and proposed repairs to Station 3, located near Pecan Grove Park East.

In recent years, city officials have scouted new locations for station 5, which is currently located along Frisco Road. Officials previously stated that the city hopes to relocate the station to a more strategic location that better represents the current layout of the city.

“Station 5 is the smallest of the stations by a good margin. it is not up to the standards of what we are expecting from our fire department in terms of how much staff it can support and what gender of staff it can support,” Strauch said.

Staff previously said there has been some interest in purchasing property along Luthor Knox for a future fire station.

Meanwhile, the city is considering investing $4.5 million in repairs for Pecan Grove station, which was built in 2000. The project calls for maintenance and other repairs that could extend the lifespan of the building.

4. Street funding becomes a focus for 2025-2026

Perhaps the biggest priority going into the 2025-2026 budget will be the creation of a plan to maintain the city’s streets. Strauch said the city plans to dedicate annual funding toward street repairs and maintenance each year starting with the upcoming budget.

“The council in general has made it clear in no uncertain terms that the biggest priority is that (streets),” he said. “They are sick and tired of hearing people complain about the streets and not having anything be done.”

Current plans for each city street include maintenance work over the course of 12 years, Strauch said.

5. Sherman holds survey for downtown input

While the city is in the planning stages for street improvements, city officials will be asking the public to help plan for improvements in downtown. City officials discussed plans to hold public surveys this summer to collect input on what the public would like to see from public improvements to downtown.

In recent months, the city has discussed the possibility of an urban park and enhanced parking in the central business district, among other improvements. The city expects to have an information booth at Hot Summer Nights each week with information on the online survey.