Kyle leaders should feel good about election results

Political leaders in our fair city should have a lot to be happy about when they examine the results of tonight’s (actually, by this time of the early morning hours, I guess I should say yesterday’s) election returns.

First and foremost is the approval of creating a new Emergency Service District for Hays County. Voters went for the idea of creating this new taxing authority with 54.07 percent of the 17,963 ballots cast being supportive of the idea. This is also good news for Kyle taxpayers. The city’s budget for this fiscal year only funded ambulance service for six months and it would require the city to come up with a seven-figure sum somehow from somewhere to continue providing it. This removes the burden of needing to come up with a way to provide this funding and means part of those savings could possibly be used for fund the engineering study necessary to move the burdensome Union Pacific Railroad siding blamed for the stalled trains that often block traffic on Center Street.

The passage of the second of the county’s two bond proposals by a comfortable margin of 59-41 percent means the construction of roads, most particularly an extension of Dacy Lane that many leaders advocated, claiming it would spur unprecedented economic growth on the east side of Kyle. It also paves the way for the county to contribute $1.5 million, that still must be matched by the city, to help fund moving that siding. The passage of the first bond proposition, albeit by a narrower 2 percent margin, provides the city the opportunity to abandon its outdated 9-1-1 emergency call center and relocate it in a new county-run center to be constructed with the proceeds from the sale of these bonds.

And something that might be overlooked, but shouldn’t, is what happened in the Buda City Council races in which 70.2 percent of the city’s registered voters cast ballots. Earlier this year, Kyle voters decided to change a section of the city’s charter and move its municipal elections from May to November in the hopes of increasing what has been, on the average, about 8 percent voter turnout. Although any pronouncement about this must be attached to the idea that voter turnout is always higher in Presidential elections than other years, that 70.2 percent figure has to be encouraging and an endorsement of the decision to make that charter change.

Although it has absolutely nothing remotely to do with Kyle, I also found these results interesting. Gary Cutler, the Republican nominee for Hays County sheriff, received 9,090 more votes than his Democratic opponent. Donald J. Trump, the Republican’s nominee for President (who is now officially President-elect), on the other hand, won only 613 more votes than Democrat Hillary Clinton in Hays County. I have absolutely no idea what that means — or even if it signifies anything of import whatsoever — but I still found it interesting.