I devote Wednesdays to my granddaughter.
Wednesdays at her school are known as "early release days" — the school day ends two hours earlier than it does the other four days of the week. Before I relocated to the area, my granddaughter would go to an after-school day care program until one or the other parent could pick her up. I asked her about the after school deal and she told me in no uncertain terms she hated it. So, as any grandparent would do, I decided to do something about it. Now on Wednesdays I drive to her school in Austin and pick her up at her 1:30 p.m. early release time. Usually we come back to Kyle where we are often seen imbibing at the Texas Pie Company (she absolutely l
oves Texas Pie Company — I can’t stress that enough: she absolutely l
oves Texas Pie Company ), taking in a show or having fun in the arcade at Evo or, depending on the weather, doing what we did today — coming back to my place and hanging out at the pool. That girl loves the water. Then we’ll have dinner together and I will drive her back to her dad’s house in South Austin, usually dropping her off sometime between 6:30 and 7 p.m. I really look forward to Wednesdays and nothing — absolutely nothing — takes priority over my spending precious moments with my granddaughter on Wednesdays.
I say all that as a way to explain why I showed up to tonight’s City Council candidate forum 30 minutes late. I did not know ahead of time what the format would be, but apparently it involved asking the District 6 candidates questions for 30 minutes, taking a break and then asking the District 5 candidates questions for 30 minutes. So, because as I said above but bears repeating here "nothing — absolutely nothing — takes priority over my spending precious moments with my granddaughter on Wednesdays," I missed the whole District 6 debate.
Not only that, dear friends, there was really nothing newsworthy that came out of the District 5 debate except the fact that all three candidates present could take lessons in how to answer questions. I can say that, because I spent almost 20 years traveling all over the world teaching a one-day course on "how to answer" questions and among the multitudes that took that course were many a politician, everything from city council to presidential candidates.
What’s worse was that these people tonight, for the most part, didn’t want to admit they didn’t know the answers to the question so they tried to tapdance around the answers. Now, of course, this is nothing new. Watch any presidential debate and the tapdancing is so pronounced the debate comes across as an audition for a chorus line. But candidates for president don’t answer the questions because they are afraid to say something that might possibly offend one segment of their support base or the voters they are courting. My fear with the city council candidates tonight was even worse — they came across as not having a clue what the right answers were.
Now I’m not going to go through all the examples of what was said at the debate, because, well, it simply wasn’t that valuable to the citizens who might be voting in the council election next month. But, as a public service, I will try to reconstruct, as best as I can, a few of the questions asked the candidates and then give the answers I believe the candidates should have given.
Q: How would you reduce the debt?
A: The real issue isn’t so much how to reduce the debt, but how do you manage the debt in a way that makes you an excellent steward of the taxpayers money. I say that, because any time you issue debt, it is accompanied by a schedule to pay it off, much in the same way the average person writes one or more checks each month to pay his or her credit card debt. Except with the city it’s a little easier because we just can’t go out and buy more junk each month to add on to the debt total. In fact, the City of Kyle has done a better job than most in managing that debt by working with its bonding agents and outside bond consultants to refinance the debt in ways that have saved the taxpayers of this city hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, in a few months, the city’s debt is going to balloon when the bonds are issued to finance the 2013 road bond projects. That issuance will also trigger a tax-rate hike to pay for those bonds. But the great news is, if that debt is managed correctly and as your next city council member I will do everything I can to make sure it is managed correctly, that debt puts us in a superb position for future capital improvements projects. The way to manage it correctly is to pay off that debt to a level that, in the case bonds needed to be issued for future capital projects, the tax rate hike used for the road projects will also pay for the new projects. And that’s one of the ways you successfully manage a city’s debt.
Q: (To be honest, I can’t remember the exact question but it started off by talking about California’s ground water shortage and ended by asking whether Hays county should regulate water in way, I’m assuming, to prevent what is happening in California. This is what, when I was teaching my course, I called a false premise because it is based on an assumption that isn’t true. But even if it was true, why go there?)
A: I am running for the Kyle City Council and not the Hays County Commissioners Court.
Q: Would you work to lower taxes.
A: Any candidate who answers that question "yes," is telling you something that, in reality, will not happen. When most people talk about lowering their taxes what they are really saying is "How can you make my tax bill go down, what can you do to make my tax payment next year less than it is this year?" I have some bad news for you. That’s probably not going to happen and, in reality, you probably don’t want that to happen. As we all know, Kyle is growing and growing rapidly. Land is a finite commodity. Put those two things together, that means the more Kyle grows, the more valuable the land becomes. The value on your homes are increasing. The good news there is that means you will be able to sell that house, if you chose to do so, for a lot more than you paid for it. But the other side of that coin is, because your taxes are based on a percentage of your property’s value, as the property increases in value, your tax bill is going to increase right along with it. You should also know that the largest, by far, of that tax bill is not taxes assessed by the city, but taxes you are paying to the school district. One thing you should keep in mind is that the percentage increases in the city’s tax rate are nowhere close to being comparable with the percentage increases in the city’s population.
Q: Our children are not safe walking to and from school. What can be done about getting sidewalks for our neighborhoods as well as crosswalks.
A: (All the candidates evaded this question by saying developers should be responsible for putting in sidewalks which is fine, but does not answer the question because it doesn’t deal with the issues in existing neighborhoods without sidewalks.) PIDs have become a dirty word in Kyle but that’s because they haven’t been used in the way they were designed to be used. If you elect me as your city council representative I will personally work with you in meeting with the city staff to discuss sidewalks for your neighborhood. During that conversation, the staff member we will meet with will tell us the city doesn’t have the money in its budget right now to pay for those sidewalks and that it’s not a high priority item for any of the upcoming budgets. We will respond by asking Give us an idea of how much money we’re talking about to put in the sidewalks. He gives us a figure and then we go back to the neighborhood and find someone living there who is good with figures, a CPA if we’re lucky, to tell us if we borrowed that amount of money at a favorable interest rate, how much would we have to assess each homeowner to pay off that loan in a reasonable amount of time and do you think the homeowners would be willing to pay that amount each month to get the sidewalks. If enough people in that discussion feel a goodly number of homeowners would go along with the idea, I, as your city councilman, will go to the city secretary, obtain the petition forms for forming a PID and then we’ll go back to the neighborhood to sell the idea and collect signatures. Now, in Dallas, where I just relocated from, it took 66.7 percent of the homeowners within the boundaries of the PID to sign the petition before it could become valid, but my research of state guidelines says only one more than 50 percent has to sign. Personally, I would go for the higher standard. Once we get the signatures, we designate a board of directors from among the homeowners and take the signatures back to the city secretary to validate them. Once the petition is validated, the request for the PID, along with the names of those on the PID board, go before the City Council for approval and I guarantee you that, if we get to this stage, I will make sure the other members of the City Council approve our PID. Then, armed with those documents, we go to a lending institution to obtain the loan, give the money to the city and say put in the sidewalks and put them in pronto. And I, as your council representative, will be looking over the staff’s shoulder to make sure pronto happens even more quickly. As for crosswalks, there are far more simple fixes. We just need to determine exactly where we want them to be and I’ll make sure we get someone from the city to those locations with a couple of brushes and some white paint. Of course, more action may be needed depending on how elaborate you want the crosswalks to be. Should they be lit? Should they be governed by traffic signals. If we want to make them more elaborate, we may need to include them in our PID loan.
Q: How would you keep in touch with constituents and do you think staff could help you make government more transparent.
A: I would schedule at least four town hall meetings each year. And to attract constituents to the meetings, I would mail postcards that not only announce the date, time and place of the town hall but they would contain a list of various members of the staff — city manager, police chief, finance director, etc. — with a box beside each name and I would ask constituents to check the box next to the name of any of those staff members they would like to get information from at the town hall meeting. I would have dropoff points around the district where these cards could be desposited. Then I would make sure that those staff members or their informed representatives were with me at the meeting, I would schedule a special town hall meeting within a week of that time when the city manager submits his proposed annual budget to the council. I would ask staff to prepare a simple slide show outlining the budget highlights and I would have the city manager, the assistant city manager, the chief of staff or the chief financial director to narrate the slide show and be prepared to answer any questions about the proposed budget at that budget townhall meeting, Then I would seek input from those in attendance on changes they would recommend to that budget. I would also establish a special Web page that’s separate from the city’s web page where I can discuss in my own way what’s going on at the city, what issues are coming to city council my constituents should be aware of, and it would have a mechanism for those constituents to share their thoughts on the web site as well.
Q: How do you feel about the fact that Hays County is the fastest growing county in the country and are you in favor of "unbridled" growth?
A: My answer to the first question is I’m ecstatic. I love the fact that we’re growing, although I must say the adjective in in the second part of your question carries with it somewhat of a negative connotation. The money that comes into our General Fund — that fund that pays for practically all city services — comes mainly from three sources: sales tax, property tax and franchise fees and other fees for services. Increased growth means increases in our sales tax revenues and the more money we get from sales taxes, the less we have to rely on property taxes, which is great news for property owners. So I say, keep ‘em coming and I pledge to do everything I can to make sure we welcome these newcomers, make them feel comfortable, make them feel an important part of the community and I think we can do that without surrendering Kyle’s unique character and attractiveness. Reno likes to call itself "the biggest little city in the world." I would love it if we earned the reputation as "the biggest, friendliest small town in all of Texas."
