What is it all about?
Traffic Congestion
The top issue that face our community is traffic congestion and the lack of
attention that the current council has paid to solving it. The current
city budget has no money allocated to easing traffic problems. Because of
bad planning over the last 30 years, we are all paying a price. A trip
across town on F.M. 518 can take as much as 45 minutes. While quick fixes are not meant
to be long term solutions, they can help ease our current problems, while long
term measures are developed, budgeted for and then implemented.
Many people blame development as the cause of our strained infrastructure and traffic problems. However, bad planning, and continued lack of focus by past council is the real culprit for our current woes. I am continually and pragmatically work to solve current problems as well as plan for the future of our community.
Clear Creek Independent School District
Another important issue is the current situation with Clear Creek Independent
School District. Clearly, our outstanding school system in League City, has
driven the desire for people to move here. If you dispute this, please
look at single family home growth rates in surrounding municipalities that not
in the Clear Creak School System. You will find that while home values in
these communities have gone up, the amount of appreciation is less than homes in
our city, and the rate of new development has not increased at a rate equal to
League City. The school district is charged with educating the children of
our community. If our city, allows growth through new multi family and
single family homes, than the school district must educate the children who move
into those homes. In the high growth rate areas of our town such as the west
side, the options for the school district on where to place schools has been
limited. Locating a school in our community will impact some residents no matter
where it goes. However, we must educate our children, and we must
support the school district in its mission. Our current city council has
chosen to not support the school district by not willingly providing roads,
water and sewer to new schools on more than one occasion. They have
accused the school district of dictating its terms to the city. This is
certainly puzzling. I will work to improve
communication with the school district, as well as support them in their efforts
to keep pace with the growth in our community. We must maintain Clear
Creek Independent Schools as top notch, for the benefit of our children, and our
community.
Spending
We must stop big ticket spending and have a more balanced city
budget. Our Council has allowed our budget to balloon, and our
debt to soar. I say, before we propose a
budget with an increase, council needs to look
closely at the city
budget. We may be able to identify some cost savings, and if there are some
savings to be found, I am sure that this can be done without impacting our
current personnel or city services provided to the residents. If in fact this tax increase is
needed, what is the cause?
Seniors
We are running our seniors out of town by making the cost of home
ownership unaffordable to retired seniors on fixed incomes. Some seniors are
actually losing their homes to foreclosure, or being forced to sell their homes
at fire sale prices when they fall behind on their tax or mortgage payments.
When they sell their homes as distressed property, they also lose thousands of
dollars of their equity on the table. In many cases, they have worked most of
their lives to pay for their homes. We all have a responsibility to stop
this. We must freeze City taxes that are levied against the homesteads of
our Senior Citizens. Due to annual increases in the appraised value of
homes in League City, freezing the tax rate is not the answer. The ideal
answer would be freeze the
amount that seniors pay annually to the City. Our seniors citizens are
usually on fixed incomes, normally pensions and social security. The
problem is that their incomes do not increase, but their taxes continue to go
up! We owe our senior citizens the right to own and afford their homes.