What does the county need? We’ve talked about this. We’ve heard this from a lot of you. We need transparency, civility. We need public access to a lot more detail – particularly on the budget, any other long-range kind of planning the county may be doing.
We need greater public knowledge of all government activities and decision processes. My focus will be to have a happy, merit-based, equal opportunity workplace. That’s where it has to begin. The judge is one thing. The commissioners are for other things. We have a whole lot of other elected officials and some great employees in this county, and they need to be happy.
I’ll be an open book. I’ll have an open door. You’ll never guess where I’m coming from. You’ll never guess if I meant what I said. I always mean what I say and I say what I mean.
I’ll be around the county. I’ll be within the county. I’ll be in a position to hand it over to whomever is elected in 2026 in good shape. I talked about that 25-year planning horizon. I think that is essential.
I don’t think we really don’t understand, most of us, exactly what that population explosion is going to look like. We’ve been talking about Travis County and Williamson County.
Have you driven to San Antonio recently. It’s a heck of a deal. Water, big focus. Whatever we do, preservation, quality of life and opportunity is essential.
I want to preserve and enhance our water and our woods. I’m an outdoors guy. We need a lot more public land in this country,
I’ve talked about people, livestock, crops and clean industry. That will be a heavy focus. Hazard mitigation – especially wildfire hazards. We have a wildfire hazard mitigation plan. I intent to see that it is fully
implemented.
I’ll be participating heavily with our emergency operations program and collaborating with our emergency coordinators. I’ll be focused on our cities as well because we need more collaborations between the counties and the cities. We’re all one big happy family when you get right down to it.
Regional collaboration as well needs to be looked at. Budget attention, fund balance, long-term debt reduction – I have some plans about that. Our fund balance is a great thing, and there are things we can do with it and should be. I’ll be looking at that and working with the commissioners to advise the best bang for the buck and what we do with that.
Overall, and perhaps most importantly, I want to enable greater public participation in everything we do such that that 800 acres that we mentioned.
I think I’m uniquely qualified to address all the county needs immediately. I’ll not be distracted by politics or any personal agenda. There’s nothing in this for me but to help you.
