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The Missouri City Branch Library’s Aztec Princess on page 5
WEDNESDAY • JULY 26, 2023 JEANNE GREGORY REALTOR®, CRS, GRI, ABR
Fort Bend / Southwest • Volume 48 • No. 36 • $1.00
Sugar Land to focus on Imperial, Lake Pointe redevelopments for now By Ken Fountain KFOUNTAIN@FORTBENDSTAR.COM
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Missouri City changes name of street that honored KKK official By Ken Fountain KFOUNTAIN@FORTBENDSTAR.COM
In an emotional meeting last week, Missouri City City Council unanimously approved a measure that will make it easier for residents to petition to change street names, and separately voted to change the name of a street named after a notorious Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan official.
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The City of Sugar Land will focus on the redevelopment of the Imperial and Lake Pointe regional activity centers before moving on to other areas of the city, the City Council said in a meeting last week. The July 19 meeting was a joint workshop of the Council and the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission to discuss proposed changes to the city’s development code which city staff say will streamline the process of approving some developments while still allowing for input from residents.
The Sugar Land City Council and the Planning and Zoning Commission hold a joint workshop on proposed changes to the city’s development code. Photo by Ken Fountain
Public interest in the proposed changes had been high, at least in social media circles, as detractors said the changes would make city
staff free to make decisions on things like the number of apartments in a development, long a source of contention in the city.
But unlike meetings earlier this year on the proposed redevelopment of the Imperial Char House and the surrounding area, very few members of the public spoke at last week’s meeting, although there were a handful written comments read aloud into the record by Mayor Joe Zimmerman. Of the comments, both written and verbal, all but one voiced concerns about the proposed changes. One person, a Missouri City resident who said he supports urbanism and mixed housing options, urged adoption of the changes when they go before Council in August. In the workshop portion of
the meeting, Assistant City Manager Jim Callaway said the proposed changes to the development code are in keeping with the land use plan adopted by Council in 2018 after a years-long review. That plan calls for the city to implement mixed-use developments in the city’s so-called regional activity centers (which include Imperial and Lake Pointe), with those developments including multifamily housing. Callaway pointed out that the Council has a legislative function to set city policies and codes, but that it is the city staff that has adminis-
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Missouri City author writes book to help students deal with pandemic
The Council lowered the percentage of residents on a street required for a petition to change a street name from 70 percent to 60 percent. In a separate action, the Council voted to change the names of Bedford Forrest Drive and Bedford Forrest Court, two adjoining streets in the Vicksburg Village of Shiloh neighborhood, to Liberty Way Drive and Liberty Way Court. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a general in the Confederate Army who later became the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist organization. Rodney and Angie Pearson, who are Black, spoke at the outset of the item discussion. They began the petition drive to change the street names. The higher percentage requirement hampered their ability to move that process forward.
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Missouri City resident Nikki Hutchinson recently penned Mary Meets Covid to help young people deal with the pandemic. Photo by Dayna Worschel
By Dayna Worschel EDITOR@FORTBENDSTAR.COM
When Nikki Hutchinson saw the young, masked children getting off of the school bus in the afternoons in her Missouri City neighborhood in 2021, she felt a sense of despair. Missouri City City Council members and residents embrace after the Council voted to change the name of a street that honored a Confederate general and KKK official. Screen capture from Missouri City Municipal Television.
At the time, the worst of the COVID-19 threat seemed to have passed for adults when the first vaccines became available. But children ages 5 to 11 would not be approved to receive the vaccine until the end of 2021. COVID was tough
enough on adults, she said. “But no one thought about how the kids felt. They had their masks on and they looked so confused, like they were trying to understand,” she said of the experience. Seeing how children were affected by the pandemic in person drove Hutchinson to want to do something to help. So, in 2021, she wrote a children’s book called Mary Meets Covid, while on vacation in Bainbridge Island, Washington during the end-of-year holidays. The book, published
in 2023, follows a young, elementary school-aged girl named Mary, who goes back to the classroom learning during the pandemic. When she first walks into the classroom, she sees plastic barriers everywhere and bottles of hand sanitizer on the desks. Mary is worried about all that she sees. But with the help of a sympathetic teacher and her classmates, she soon learns they will get through the situations if they work together as a team. Hutchinson, a former IV pharmacy technician who
now works remotely for a health insurance company, said she hopes the book will help children understand more about the pandemic and let them know that it’s okay to be confused. “It was a strain on me, and I could only imagine what it must have been like for kids who couldn’t go outside or play with friends,” she said. Huchinson, who grew up in Missouri City, attended Sartartia Middle School and Elkins High School. Today, she has three dogs she adores, and
has plans to write other books. Once she completes her associate’s degree in health science, Hutchinson says she may go for a doctorate in psychology or education. The biggest lesson she hopes kids can take away from the book, though, is to never take life for granted. “Cherish those moments while you can. People can sometimes go years without speaking. I want to teach young people to not be so quick to judge,” Hutchinson said. Mary Meets Covid is available for purchase online.