Born and raised in Taylor, and a graduate of Taylor High School 1989. I moved to Austin in 1989 then moved back to Taylor in 2001. Moved to Houston at the end of 2001. I stayed there until 2003, moved back to Taylor and started getting involved with the community as soon as I came back. I saw a need for programs for kids. So, me, a neighbor and a friend started a summer camp for a young man. Some of the guys from that summer, camp include Mark, Jackson and Justin and his brother, Dantrell Hargers.
This was a camp that was open to all boys because we didn’t have any females that could help us. It was basically a male camp.
From that started my own foundation and it was just basically a foundation run through the state. We weren’t a 501(c)3, but we were still doing stuff in the community. We started doing the toy drive about eight years ago with the Texas Beer Company through the Bill Pickett Educational Foundation. I’m also the executive director of the Bill Pickett Educational Foundation, which is a nonprofit that teaches history and educates people on the history of western heritage as well as Bill Pickett. We do a lot of stuff to that.
I’m the president of the Boys and Girls Club. I’m a Conservation Heritage Society board member.
I’m a board member of Trinity charter schools, which is a charter school that runs throughout the state of Texas to help males and females that have been trafficked or come from neglected backgrounds.
How old are you and what do you do for a living?
I am 50 years old. Right now, I’m just contracting out for Uber as well as Lift. But like I said, I’m also on boards and committees all throughout the city and just giving back to the community. But as far as how I pay the bills, it’s Uber and Lift right now.
What is your previous experience with elected or appointed office?
Being that I’m actually on the city council right now, I have three years of experience on city council, two years as mayor pro tem.
What are some of your community activities?
Executive director of the Bill Pickett Educational Foundation. We do a toy drive every year. Last year, we helped 400 kids and I think right at 100 families. We’ve also take girls from middle school to The Nutcracker. I’ve also been a mentor to middle school. I’m on the board of directors for the Taylor Conservation and Heritage Society. I’m the president of the Boys and Girls Club of East Williamson County.
I’ve recently been asked to be on the board of the Williamson Museum and I’m on the board of Trinity Charter Schools.
Why are you running?
I want to see Taylor continue to progress in the prosperity that we have going right now. I feel like I’m the right candidate for the job being at things have changed dramatically since I’ve gotten in office. We’ve landed the largest economic development deal in the state of Texas and the history of the state of Texas, actually.
We set our master plan to provide positive growth, and smart growth for the future. We have a steep street level up program that we’ve implemented.
Robinson Park is basically the nicest park in town now. We’ve got new lights. We’ve got a new community center. We’ve got soccer goals. To continue the progress that has been started since I’ve come to the council.
How do you, how would you handle the preparation for this growth?
With our comprehensive master plan. That’s what the Strong Town’s approach to our comprehensive master plan is about. Smart growth, growth as close as you can to an already established infrastructure. So, we’re not stretching city resources, further then they need to be stretched.
We don’t want to become a community that is full of subdivisions that are not connected to the town. When we did our comprehensive master plan meetings, with citizens and ask for their input, their input was, we want Taylor to keep its charm. By having a master plan that does the strong towns approach, which is basically building within the infrastructure, building different price points of houses, from small one bedrooms and cottages to luxury homes for executives. It’ll give everybody that wants to be in Taylor a place to live.
We all know affordability is just high. I think Taylor gained a billion dollars in worth just over last year alone. The average price went from a $193,000 or $307,000 in one year. That was before Samsung.
We didn’t announce Samsung until November. So, the argument that Samsung is driving prices up is not true. The fact that we’re 30 minutes from Austin is what’s driving prices.
How do you plan to involve citizens in the decisionmaking process for our community?
Number one, they need to come to council meetings and get involved, but they can also reach out to us individually. I don’t know of any citizen that has reached out to me that I didn’t respond to. I don’t know of any requests for help that a citizen asked me for that I didn’t respond to.
Just getting in contact with your councilmen, to let them know what your concerns are, and we respond. We’re not just sitting back, not taking in information and keeping everything ourselves. You’re allowed to go to the meetings, you’re allowed to reach out to your council members, you’re allowed to come to any of the meetings that we have that are open to the public.
I think people just getting involved and coming to the meetings and reaching out to their council members if they have an issue because we are answering. Reach out to staff if you have a problem. Our city staff is great. They’re going to respond to your request for information or whatever it may be. If you have a problem with your permit, or if you have a problem with code enforcement. Whatever your problem, is your street, your water, the city will respond if you reach out to us. As a councilman we don’t go and knock on doors and say how can I help you today? So, if you don’t reach out to us, we don’t know you have an issue. You have to reach out to us. It’s 17 plus thousand people in this town, we can’t go knocking on everybody’s doors every day. But if you reach out to us and let us know you have a problem. We will respond.
What is the biggest single issue facing Taylor right now?
It’s still roads and the money to fix roads. With Samsung coming in, overtime, it’ll allow us to fix roads. But we do have our street level up program that will be implemented the year before I got on the council. That was $50,000 allotted to streets. Now, we have $250,000 that’s allotted to fix streets. When you listen to Jim Gray, our public works director, explain it, that’s a significant amount of money because we’re also buying the tools that we need to cut down on paying contractors.
So, more work will be done in house, which will allow us to get a better bang for our buck by just paying our own workers versus going out and hiring contractors to do that job, while still paying our other workers are doing their job.
To me streets and housing affordability is the biggest single problem that we’re going to have as a whole community. Some people have nice streets, some people don’t.
Housing affordability with the tax rates going up. You know, I know people that said the tax rate went up $300,000 in one year.
How do you afford to pay the taxes, even if you own the home? That’s not the city. That’s the county.
With the county actually doing the appraisers, it’s still hard for us. We did the tax exemption for people over 65.
People said there’s a lot the city couldn’t do, but the city lowered taxes in 2021, and will be able to lower taxes again with the appraisal rates coming in high.
What else we can do is offer more affordable housing, to different price points.
What is Taylor’s biggest asset?
The people without a doubt. The people because when things get tough and we have problems, like the tornado recently, people come to each other’s aid without any question of race, religion, culture demographic. Nobody cares about that stuff when the pressure is on and people are in need, we come together in Taylor to make sure people are being helped and people are being taken care of to the best of our abilities.
Even you saw it with Snovid, I personally put out a plea on Facebook that we needed to help the homeless. And from that we housed probably 30 homeless people for maybe a week. Not even homeless people, just people who didn’t have electricity, but they needed a warm place to stay.
I think the people are definitely our biggest asset because we come together when it’s time. We have our differences, just like anywhere else, but I think when the heat is on, we come together to help each other, okay.
What is the biggest concern in your District?
Housing affordability.
It comes back to that. That’s the key problem, right now. That’s the biggest issue is people that have owned their houses for 30 years, 40 years. That now, like we just discussed, they have the property value went from, $100,000 to $200,000. So, them being able to afford their taxes, and a lot of them on fixed income. I have a lot of people that are seniors in my community, in my district and they’re on a fixed income. So, there is no more money to pay more taxes when you get the tax bill.
That’s the biggest concern, housing affordability. We’re not even talking about gentrification yet. We’re not even talking about people. coming into District 1 and buying properties and building brand new houses to add to the tax rolls to increase the price of the medium value of the home. We’re talking about just two homes that are there right now that are becoming unaffordable.
Again, it’s that housing affordability and trying to make sure the people that are here, can stay here.
Are there any concerns in your District that you feel have not been addressed?
I like to think I’ve done a pretty good job of addressing the issues of people have brought to me. Like I said, I can’t be everywhere at one time, but I am active in the neighborhood and active in the community. I’m out in the neighborhood.
I think as far as what more could be done, the streets are being addressed, I think we have maybe some issues with some overgrown, lots better, that maybe need to be cut or people not keeping up with a property so it’s becoming a problem for code enforcement.
I think other than that, I think District 1 has actually been in pretty good shape over the last few years. I know the Robinson Park has received some major upgrades. Crime is not high in District 1. I think we probably have the lowest crime rate in the end of all four districts in District 1.
The people over there are happy. You go through the neighborhood or walk through the neighborhood; the people are friendly. People are nice. It’s new people coming to the neighborhood. There are new duplexes and a few new houses, and you can see the new life coming to the neighborhood.
I think more commerce in south Taylor is an issue. We’ve got Rojas and we’ve got Gonzalez tacos, and that’s all we got.
I’ll take more commerce, maybe a gas station, maybe more restaurants, maybe some more stores, maybe a small grocery store like we used to have one Marshalls, was up and running in south Taylor. Something where people can stay in in the district and spend their money in the district.
Why should voters elect you?
Proven leadership. A proven track record of success. The proof is in the facts.
You look at, like I said, the largest economic development comprehensive master plan, streets being redone, lights in Robinson Park, where that softball field hadn’t been used properly in 10 years, maybe longer than that and it’s the only softball field in town. A new community center, a new bathroom and Robinson Park.
Proven leadership. Proven leadership, and proven leadership that cares about everybody. Now. I’m not, I’m not just caring about what happens inside the loop. We’ve done a seller request on Southwood Hills. We’ve repaved Old Gravel Pit Road. We repaved Old Coupland Road.
It’s not that I just care about what’s going on in inside the loop and closer to Robinson Park and that area of the district. But that’s where the biggest neglect was it. In order to make things right, you go where the most neglect was and then you work your way out.
I felt it was very necessary to make sure that that part of the district that hadn’t received the representation that it should have been receiving over the past decade or so, that it received the attention it needed. And it may have looked like I was hyper focus on that, but I wasn’t. Because while we were hyper focused on making sure Robinson Park and south Taylor inside the loop were being addressed, we were also had issues on Southwood Hills, and Old Coupland Road, and Old Gravel Pit Road and in Crestview and on Old Thorndale Road. All of that was being addressed. So, there was no area of District 1 that was being left out.
Proven leadership and the fact that I do what I say, and I say what I mean, I think it’s something that people can count on versus giving you miss information about what’s going on. I’m going always shoot it straight. You might not like the answer but I’m going to give you the honest answer.
