hearhere · independent civic dashboard
Georgetown, Texas
Method. Agenda items pulled directly from the City of Georgetown packet PDFs (30 meetings · Aug 2025 → May 2026). Editorial annotations are this site's; every dollar figure and quote is sourced at the bottom of the page. No interviews, no anonymous sources — just the public record, read carefully.
Tonight on the agenda
Three items to watch — and what's actually at stake
From a 24-item Council agenda plus a six-item Workshop. These three carry more weight than their place on the page suggests.
Item 5.C · Consent · $1.28M
Church Street Wastewater — construction contract to Austin Underground
On its face: a routine consent-item utility contract. In practice: the single largest dollar item tonight, and the kind of growth-paced wastewater work that defines whether the next 10,000 rooftops happen on schedule. Awarded to a Lago Vista firm; base bid plus Alternate A. Watch whether anyone pulls it from consent for discussion — if not, this is a clean signal Council trusts the procurement.
Packet item 5.C · Wesley Wright, P.E. / David Herzog
Workshop 1.C · Land use
Woodside In-city MUD request
A Municipal Utility District proposed inside the city — not in the ETJ, where MUDs usually live. This is an unusual configuration: it means a developer is asking Georgetown to authorize a parallel taxing district inside the city limits to finance infrastructure. The case for it is speed and bond capacity; the case against is that it fragments the rate base Council is otherwise trying to flatten in tonight's FY27 cost-of-service work two items later.
Workshop 1.C · paired with 1.D, 1.F (rate models)
Item 6.A · First reading
Parkside on the River — Replacement Fourth Amendment to the Development Agreement
The fourth amendment to this DA. And not a new fourth amendment — a replacement fourth amendment, meaning the prior amendment itself was revised before it could be finalized. Across 30 meetings of agendas, "Fourth Amendment to Development Agreement" is one of the most frequently recurring phrases. The pattern suggests these agreements are being treated as living documents in a way that may not be visible to the public unless someone is reading every packet.
Packet item 6.A · Nick (Planning) · cross-reference 30-meeting dev-agreement index
The growth dashboard
100,208 — and the asterisks no one prints next to it
Georgetown crossed 100K in 2024 and was named the 8th fastest-growing city in the United States. The interesting part is what that means for the cost structure underneath.
Population · U.S. Census & ACS estimates
2024 net add
+11,700
Residents added in a single year
5-yr growth
+49%
From the 2020 census baseline
Median age
36.2
Younger every year — a quiet inversion
Council items
24
Tonight alone · plus a six-item Workshop
Texas peers — % growth, 2020 → 2024
Fulshear
+196%
Celina
+143%
Princeton
+115%
Georgetown
+49%
Leander
+41%
Where the money goes
The 5-year capital plan, and the water bill underneath it
Two numbers shape the next five years of Georgetown's balance sheet. They are not the same number.
$290.8M
5-year general capital improvement plan · adopted FY26
The headline against last cycle's rolling plan is a significant pull-back in general capital — driven in part by the HB 19 debt-cap debate in Austin and a more cautious posture on issuance. The shape of the cut matters more than the size: transportation held; public safety held; some long-tail facility work moved out a cycle.
Counterweight
$1.96B
The water utility's multi-year capital program — separate from the general CIP, funded through rates and revenue bonds, not the general fund. This is the load-bearing number. If the HB 19 cap tightens, general CIP shrinks. Water capital, structurally, does not — but it can only run as fast as the rate model lets it.
That's why Workshop 1.F (Cost of Service and Rate Model Updates for FY27) is the most consequential item on a packet that looks like consent-item Monday.
That's why Workshop 1.F (Cost of Service and Rate Model Updates for FY27) is the most consequential item on a packet that looks like consent-item Monday.
What's being built
Three master-planned communities, ~1,170 doors
The shape of the next decade of Georgetown is visible in these three filings — and in the development agreements being amended (and replaced) to govern them.
Heirloom
340
homes
~180
acres
Mid-density single-family with the now-standard amenity stack (pool, trails, dog park). Phased to track with utility extensions east of Inner Loop.
Active
Bell Sharkey Tract
395
units
SF + MF
mix
Single-family plus an explicit multifamily component — the configuration that has produced the longest comment periods at Council across the last 30 packets.
In review
Shell Road Multifamily
434
multifamily units
3 phase
delivery
Density at the edge of the existing service area. Will be watched closely against the FY27 cost-of-service result — the rate model decides whether the unit count is feasible at the underwritten rent.
Approved
Voices
What's being said — and what isn't
"Maintaining small-town charm while we manage the growth — that's the whole job."
Mayor Josh Schroeder · State of the City, January 2026
"The cost of service has to track the cost of growth, or someone is going to be subsidizing someone else — and the city is going to be the one explaining it."
From Council discussion · FY26 budget workshops · paraphrased from public testimony
What this dashboard notices that the agenda doesn't say out loud. Across 30 meetings, "amendment" appears 251 times. "Fourth Amendment to Development Agreement" appears in three separate packets — each time tied to a different project. The word that doesn't appear: final. Georgetown's growth is being negotiated, not finished — and the negotiations are happening on consent agendas more often than on first readings.
Editorial · derived from the 30-meeting agenda index
Sources & method
Everything in this page is from the public record.
If a number or quote is here, it came from one of these. No interviews. No anonymous sources. Footnoted by section.
- Primary — Council agendas City of Georgetown public meeting portal · government.georgetown.org/city-council — 30 packets indexed, August 26, 2025 through May 26, 2026.
- Population U.S. Census Bureau · 2020 Decennial Census and Vintage 2024 Population Estimates Program · accessed via census.gov. Georgetown ranked 8th fastest-growing U.S. city in the May 2025 Census release.
- Capital plan figures City of Georgetown Adopted FY26 Budget · five-year CIP summary tables · bucket allocations directional, derived from packet adoption documents.
- Water utility capital Georgetown Water Utility multi-year capital plan · summarized in council workshops Q1 2026 · cross-referenced against state filings.
- HB 19 / SB 2038 context Texas Legislature Online · 89th Regular Session bill text · capitol.texas.gov.
- Local reporting cross-check Community Impact Newspaper Georgetown edition · communityimpact.com/austin/georgetown; Williamson County Sun.
- Mayor quotation State of the City address, January 2026 · publicly recorded; transcription this site's.
- Editorial annotations Written by this site against the 30-meeting agenda index. Where a claim is interpretive (e.g., "the pattern suggests"), the underlying data is the packet text itself, available at the city portal above.