Since he began as city manager for Taylor in 2019, Brian LaBorde has dealt with a lot including the arrival of Samsung Austin Semiconductor, the pandemic, aging infrastructure in need of repair and maintenance.
But LaBorde said he and city staff are rising to meet these challenges head on.
On Monday, Dec. 12, Taylor Press Area Editor Jason Hennington had the chance to ask LaBorde how he has helped the city navigate these issues in the season two premiere of Taylor Talk, a monthly interview hosted by the Taylor Press.
“Team effort—there is a great team here,” LaBorde said. “We have a supportive council… we have a really strong, experienced team for the size (of the city).”
One way that team-work shows has been through helping land the Samsung deal, LaBorde said.
“It took a team to work with them and to establish that,” LaBorde said. “We could have easily just not done our jobs, and they could have gone somewhere else. But the team is very competent, very professional, and it took all of us to make that happen.”
Despite the economic downturn, landing Samsung, as well as the other global companies who are arriving across the region, is already helping our area see more prosperity.
“In the state of Texas, we seem to be very robust during economic downturns, and Taylor is no exception,” LaBorde said. “And while maybe we will be seeing a little bit of a slowdown, we were seeing really high numbers with sales. And that is fantastic, and we are still continuing to see that. So we are very blessed with a strong and robust economy here.”
“From Samsung coming in, we all knew that economic development would happen, but not to this great extent, LaBorde added.
LaBorde, who has about 25 years of municipal experience, said with this additional revenue, one priority for the city is fixing streets that were deteriorating before our eyes and “going back to nature.”
“We have had to make a commitment, where I think before, it was if you are going to do a street, you have to do it right, but with our drainage and our soils, it is very expensive,” LaBorde said. “And that’s with the drainage and the utilities that go underneath, plus with our soils, they are very expansive here, you really have to do almost double the amount of material and design and work that you normally would do in another region.”
One way the city has been dealing with them is through the Level Up program, which allows the city to provide restorative maintenance on street sections to make them drivable until major reconstruction will take place.
“ We are blessed with a strong economy, and that’s doing wonders,” LaBorde said. We want to get the message and the story out that those tax dollars are coming in or being put to work, from streets, from drainage, capital projects …whatever was before, we’re committed to now bringing Taylor up to where it needs to be.”
Taylor Talk is a casual conversation where officials discuss their work, upcoming projects, parts about their life and ways their departments connect to the community.
The interview can be seen live on the second Monday of the month at noon at www.facebook. com/GoTaylorTx/. All previous episodes are available on the Taylor Press Facebook page as well.
