HomeMy WebLinkAboutDick Haddox City Council Interview Questions & Answers
Council Member Interview Questions
February, 2012
Thank you so much, Mr. Haddox, for taking the time to participate in this interview for the City of College Station’s Project HOLD, historic online library database. This interview about
your tenure as Council Member of College Station will become part of that invaluable library for current and future generations. We really appreciate your time and participation!
Dick Haddox
Address: 6010 Augusta Ct. College Station.
Phone #: 979-690-6255
Email: haddoxdick@yahoo.com
Served on City Council 1986-1989 (2 terms)
1. Running for Office.
Elizabeth Vastano Q- What led to your decision to run for public office?
Dick Haddox A- Well, actually a group of citizens came to see me, a primarily business people that were concerned about they felt that we didn’t have enough business judgment on the
council, a lot of people that represented and worked at A&M, there were other people on the council that were citizens, but the felt like that we needed to had more business judgment
involved in the council. And I was a business man. They thought that I was a successful businessman, sometimes I wonder, but that was the group that came to talk to me about it and
got to thinking about it and talked more about it to my wife, frankly I never run for anything in my life, and I’ve been appointed things but I never run for anything and decided that
I would do it. (02:04)
Q- Was it the same motivation each time or were there different triggers for your second term?
A- Well~ The first time I thought they needed businesses, the second time I knew they needed businesses. (laughing)
Q- What is your most vivid memory of the campaign experience?
A- Well~ I tell you what I asked Fred Brown who had been on the Council and he was my neighbor and asked Fred, I said “Fred, I never run for anything in my life”, I said “what do you
think I have to do?” He said, “I am really a big proponent of walking the neighborhood.” So I walked the neighborhood I lost about 15 pounds. What is scariest thing was you ring the
door bell to knock on the door and the little kid runs to the door and here comes a dog and the little kid is automatically wants to let you in so he opens
the door and out comes the dog, you know, trying to keep from getting dog bit. But that was the most memorable things about campaign, it is amazing how many people have dogs that come
running outside if you try to open the door.
Q- Would you say that your campaign(s) focused on issues or on personality differences?
A- I think that the personality certainly has a place in a candidate running for office. I think the issues weren’t specific issues from the standpoint of saying that we will be trying
to keep a dam from coming here and dam to come here something like that. But I think the issues were in my mind were more we needed a business experience, the City of College Station
was getting larger and larger and was a big business. And I feel like the issue was we needed people that were successful running business that were sizable. And that time we probably
had a business about 200 employees. So I had a lot of business experiences I felt like that was needed.
Q- Did your family participate in your campaign?
A- They did. As a matter of fact I was with ANCO insurance and a bunch of the ladies with ANCO participated, I was really pleased about that. They were in a lot of the functions and
where I made talks and stuff and my wife participated in that. This is a little prejudiced but I think I had the best looking wife with the best personality. (05:20)
Q- What do you think gave you the edge to win?
A- It was my wife. I don’t know. I think that we got the point over, fortunately, along with my business experience I had participated in a lot of things as far as community was concerned
that was Brazos Beautiful, the mission, a lot of different projects in the community that were going on. I think that a lot of people knew me, a lot of people heard my name, a lot of
people seen me in different projects we did and so forth. I think that helps us great deal. I think I probably was energetic, I think that sort of comes through and I was determined
and I don’t know that I made best speeches in the world but I think I am a sincere person but I am so light-hearted from the standpoint of I like to smile and I like to have fun but
deep down I am sincere and I think that came through. (06:47)
Q- Was your second campaign easier than your first?
A- I didn’t have an opponent. That’s a lot easier.
2. There is a saying that all politics is local.
Q: How has city politics changed from your council service to today?
A: well~ I think that is pretty much the same.. I think that the difference would be if I was… be able to pinpoint that would be that..... It is so easier to communicate today you can
get in touch with.. you know, hundreds people more than you could when I was first you know when we first started campaigning the internet wasn’t being used. Today with Facebook, LinkedIn,
Internet, just all kind of ways you can communicate with people and get to vast number of people quickly. Likewise, I guess as far as you are with the Council. Bad things can be passed
around just as fast as, or faster than they could be before. I think people are really really in the public eye and no matter how small the event is today. You know you hear about everything,
you know, little things and major things. So I think it puts a lot more pressure on people today because people gonna know every time you turn around what you did, what you said this
same something haven’t repeated exact like you said is really tough because it doesn’t happen a lot. I think the paper does good job or news, TV, radio, they all do a good job. But
it is always amazing to me that they never quite sounded the way I thought I said it. They nevertheless did a good job. (09:11)
Q: How would you characterize your relationship with other City Council members while you are on the Council?
A: I think I had a good relationship with them. Personally I felt that was a responsibility that I should have. I think that if you gonna, I always found that in business I had business
partners… you just can’t always get your way.. you have to be considerate of what other people think, and as a result of it I think it helped me on the Council from standpoint of…
even though I might have an adverse opinion with somebody that certainly they have some point that day of the some reason they felt that way and I felt it was my responsibility to find
out what that was and certainly if I felt strongly about something I felt like taking a stand at the same time not be so rigid that you couldn’t get things accomplished and I think
compromise is something that sometimes people make compromise sound bad, like you don’t want to compromise your ethics you don’t want to compromise your honesty, but the people have
a lot of, evaluation is about what could be doing about certain things and as a result of it you can’t always get your way in if you want to accomplish something you need to be willing
to consider a person’s opinion. So I think it is very valuable and important to respect other Council people if you can… (That’s interesting. That should be a speech you give to high
school students or something because they have so much trouble understanding the concept of ‘compromise’ I think.) I’ve seen that today. (There is such a difference and you said it
so clear and I’m not suppose to digress I know but... You said it very clear.) (11:15)
3. City employees sometimes feel they are precluded from knowing or talking with local elected officials.
Q: During your time on a Council did you reach out to city employees?
A: I don’t know. Reach out may be a term that I might not say that I reached out I think that I was certain willing to talk to anyone within city as an employee that if they have some
question why we are doing something, or why I felt the certain way, I think it is important to talk to them, person. And running a company, you tried to get your
employees to feel free to talk to their supervisors and work with their supervisors about listen to their employees, and sometimes it doesn’t happen. And sometimes we have an employee
go around the supervisor I think it is important as you listen to him, at the same time I think you really need to try to work it through the supervisors and having be part of it because
otherwise you sort of destroy the system that you are setting up about, you know, your company, your organization, city organization and such. And sometimes you find out, you know,
by getting them together in talking about things though. But I thought I know that I have citizens, I mean the citizen, but I had employees, a few employees come and talk to me. I didn’t
tell them there was something that was going to happen a certain way, but I visited with their supervisor and try to do it in a way and they wouldn’t get upset with employee, you know,
where you said maybe I asked the employee about something instead of saying that the employee came to me and it seemed like it always worked pretty well.
Q: How did the City Manager and Department Heads feel about direct interaction with employees?
A: I think they wanted you to tell the employee that they should go through the supervisor. I think that almost any city manager would tell you that. Whether it be the city manager or
the managers of the various departments. They felt that way.
Q: What kind of relationship did you have with the City Manager?
A: I thought I had a good relationship with both of them. One was Kim Cole, and another was Ron Ragsdale. And I thought I had a great relationship with them.
Q: How would you say a City Council member knows what is “really” going on in city departments?
A: Well, first of all, in our Council, we really had a lot of.. not only city manager give a report they were very often that were times different managers of various departments
would give a report on what was going on, and certainly I think our Council felt pretty free to ask city manager that we like to hear from, so and so, you know, we like to hear what
he has to say about that. And sometimes the city manager might not quite like that, but I think that because we didn’t demand it or we didn’t…. I don’t remember anything coming out
that was bad about it. So I don’t think the city manager felt like we were mistreated immediately, but like the other side, I think it work out pretty well.(15:21)
4. TAMU has been central to College Station from its beginnings. Indeed, most city services first came through the University and the history of College Station can be seen partly as
a reach for independence in providing those basic city services.
Q: How would you characterize the relationship between the City and the University during your time on the Council?
A: Well, I felt like that we could have had a better relationship with Texas A&M. I was sort of fortunate in that one of the Chairman of the Board of regents was a friend of mine and
I can talk to him more or less on the side and to say what is A&M doing on this….. whatever. But, at the same time, always feel like the city of College Station
and Texas A&M should have a better relationship than they have had over the years.(16:25) And it’s not so much that they don’t care about each other. They just don’t rarely tell each
other much about what each one is doing, and I think they are really pretty closely related and…. A&M is a citizen of ours from the standpoint of being in the city. The best example,
I can think of was whenever they were talking about lowering the tracks, this was not a city council responsibility but I took on going around and speaking on behalf of the project
it was gonna be a bond issue or voted on. And I went to several of the service clubs like a Lions Club, the Rotary Club and so forth. And what came out of that was I felt like the employees
of A&M felt like that the leaders of A&M would try to cram that down their throat. And I went to the president of A&M, and I said, you know you really need to have some meeting it’s
what I’ve found out, and passed it on to him I think that if you really want to get this passed, you need to make them feel like that is they have more say so in this than the way they
feel. Well, I think either I didn’t handle it right or he just got personally, you know, he resented it. And it’s the president’s thing, but I guess what it boils down to is that issue
didn’t pass. I think the reason I passed is I think the A&M employees voted against it. And as a result of it, you know, we missed an opportunity with A&M and the railroad and all this
back then probably could have been done and done less expensively than anything else from that standpoint. But I guess what it boils down to is and I think and I hope that whatever
comes out this in the future. That we build… I think they have a good relationship, we need better one. (18:30)
Q: What special issues are there to being a city council member in a university town?
A: Well, I think one of the issues is students. You know students, merchants most business people feel that students are great, because they buy the products, they buy the grocery, they
buy their clothes, they buy all kind of stuff, and so they think of students have been a plus.(19:08) A lot of our regular citizens consider a nuisance because number one, their entertainments
different. If you live around where they have new entertainment probably consider loud, the parking, students influence either good or bad parking, a lot of people, you know, when they
are out for the semester for break, spring break something like that, everybody says, “Wow isn’t that nice? Traffic’s less.” So you have that. And the other thing is that the students
don’t vote. You know, do you encourage them to vote? A lot of citizens would be probably be scared to death if they thought that 47,000 students would suddenly start voting in College
Station. Basically, what would they do? We might have all kind of things we did not want, you know. So I think that because of this, and then you also have the… I have been involved
in something in housing tried to get to eliminate steps so… over the years as a volunteer effort, and I guess what it boils down to is that you have these houses that become substandard
that a lot of students live in College Station. That’s not the only problem we also have low income people. But I think what you are asking here is that university town that some of
the things that special, unique problems about because of this from the standpoint of giving law enforcement as well as the planning for parking, traffic flow and buses, and this types
of things. So if you got a unique problem, maybe not a problem but a challenge. I guess what it was. (21:10)
6. Transportation is always a point of great interest in growing communities.
Q: Was transportation an issue in your administration?
A: You know I am eighty years old and there is a lot of things I don’t remember. And I don’t remember that being an issue… a big issue. I think we have always been interested in trying
to have good transportation, that’s buses or taxies or you know, even routes of traffic flow. So I guess that getting people from the one place to the other and getting in a nice efficient
fast way and safe is always a concern, we were concerned about it that time. I don’t remember anything really big or specific that happened during the time that I can talk about.
7. College Station has a strong parks and recreation system.
Q: Did the parks system expand during your terms?
A: They did. And I know that one of the things got started at that time which… I was involved in, that was Wolf Pen Creek. Wolf Pen Creek was an idea that I had along with Steve Beachy,
and Steve and I, one day, got to talking about this and I came up with the location I’ve been looking around to trying to find out the creek or something. I am a big fan of the River
Walk in San Antonio. I love it. I just think it’s the neatest thing and I just thought, “Wow, if we can ever do something like that in College Station it would be fantastic.” And I
found out Steve was a person who is in charge of parks and recreation at that time in College Station, a friend of mine. And we got to talking about it, he told me that he had done
some research into it, “so we got fired up and all of a sudden we had two of us that like this, and so I told him about this location and so we began to try to plan to make this happen”,
he says. Unfortunately, my second term went out before we ever really got it done. And then they voted when I wasn’t in office and then really decided not to do it full blown like I
wanted to see it done, we ended up with outdoor theatre which is great and has been well utilized, and so forth. The walks are nice, but I wanted to see boats in there, row boat type
things, canoes, whatever that would run up and down there and that never happened unfortunately. So that was sort of a let down that I didn’t get that done. Well, you know good news
was we did end up with an amphitheatre and some more walks. (24:42)
Q: Were there preservation efforts to mark the City’s historic buildings, homes and other places of interest?
A: I think that was already in place. I mean, the best of my knowledge, I don’t remember anything specifically happening about saying do that… I know that I don’t know where this comes
in, but I know about George Bush drive, talking about, I guess that, are we talking about libraries?
Q: Yeah, well, just I think public library if you talk about…
A: Well, one thing happen while I was on the Council and… I think I made the motion I am not sure about it basically we changed the name of Jersey street to George Bush drive and that
one before George Bush said put the library out there.
And that was an effort to let him know that the community felt that strongly about it before that we wanted him and we felt like the city could voice that by renaming the street before
he made the decision. I am not saying that’s the reason he did it but… A&M had a lot to do with it. But anyway I think that helped and it was a good policy response there were some
objection to that we had to sort of work on that wasn’t real easy. Because people living there didn’t want their address changed, and at any rate we got that accomplished…(26:15)
Q: Was there any interest in promoting historic tourism during your time on the Council?
A: Well, We get tried to get… we encouraged tourism. We tried to do things that encourage it that was one of the reasons we felt like that. Wolf Pen Creek would be good thing to do that.
I always felt that… You know College Station is very fortunate and we had… Because of the ball parks and stuffs we have, recreation areas we have. We’ve been able to bring a lot of
kids coming here for sporting activities and tournaments and Beachy did a wonderful job on that area and such. And that was something that we were very actively promoting when I was
in Council and it’s been continued and they’ve done a great job of it over the years feel like that we still lack some things like I would love to see us have a big water feature here.
You know that had big enough like New Braunfels, where people go there, take the kids there spend weekend, couple of nights or something. Because the entertainment I think that along
with golfing facilities here we need to work it up so that, the person can come here and say here’s be a point of interest they would have all these activities go to library you know
play golf, have water features, swim, playground for young kids and stuff. I would like to see that promoted and I think we started it, we weren’t the only ones to do it. We were certainly
active in that. We like to see that continue. (28:20)
8. The relationship of College Station and Bryan has been up and down over the years.
Q: How would you characterize relations with Bryan during your tenure as Council member?
A: Well, I’ll tell you what. Before I got on the Council, I was exposed to because I moved here from… one time in 1959, I lived here for 8 years something like that, and 1965 moved to
Houston, lived in Houston for like 17 years, I came back in early 1980. When I lived here the first time, things like… Bryan cut the water off, so that College Station couldn’t, if
they had fire, couldn’t even fight the fire because couldn’t get the water, I mean because they got mad at them.. I mean this kind of stuff. We had a terrible relationship going on
between Bryan and College Station back in 60’s - 70’s. When I came back, it had improved. Some reasons of improved is that some of the people in Bryan probably doing some things in
College Station area get little closer being more like a one community but it still wasn’t really wonderful. So I happened to be a person who had a business that was located in Bryan,
Texas. But we did business with Bryan-College Station, all of Texas, and so from my standpoint, it was just like one community. I mean I didn’t look at it as two different cities. Although
I lived in College Station and I went to Bryan and my office is in Bryan, but my employees were
probably half Bryan people, half College Station people. And to me, you know, it was insolent, it was crazy that we felt away we felt, so my efforts, and people like Fred Brown who had
a dealership in Bryan lived in College Station was my neighbor, lived across the street from me.
We worked really really hard on trying to get College Station to and Bryan to do things together. Things like police reporting, for instance, if there was a police or fire problem, we
tried to get both cities help each other especially where it was just, you know, closely inside the city limits, one way or the other, and even on big fires, we felt like that they
should.. both should answer if they needed help and such. So we made some progress in the police and law enforcement area and the fire department area. And then we worked on trying
to do other things together I was apalled at the land disposable thing, waste disposal thing that happened a few years ago. Where it looked like they got it worked out and that’s great,
but I mean, you know, we just should be able to work together better than… and that something with.. I think really really needs to be worked on.(32:03)
Q: How about the relationship with Brazos County and College Station?
A: Well~ I’m gonna say to you… I think that the people they were on their county and cities.. I think they tried to get work together. Personally, I sort of felt like that even talk
to Al Jones about… I feel like that the county ought to have, you know, a substation in College Station, I mean I think you are… you shouldn’t have to go to the courthouse to pay your
taxes, I mean, in College Station, if anything, it will be like they ought to have two offices, one in the city or something. I have a tendency I just started to feel that the county
is pro-Bryan versus College Station. I don’t want to feel that way. Like all the people that serve as Councilmen, Tony Jones, people in College Station is on the County Commissioner,
and Al Jones lived over here, but I also served on the.. I was a Chairman of the Expo center, when we built it, and got the location for it and so forth, and there wasn’t any doubt
in my mind even I was a chairman I was, I knew where that was going to go and that was Bryan, wasn’t going to go in College Station even if, no way it was going in College Station,
and even if it has been close to the county land I mean the city, so I just think that that’s an area that we need to work on more, I think that I like to feel better about College
Station being more considered by a county. I’m not wild to get that out, but I guess that’s what I feel and would like to see more progress in that area so. (34:28)
9. Let’s move on to your Achievements:
Q: When you ran for office, were there specific goals you wanted to achieve? I know you’ve spoken a little bit about that indirectly.
A: Number one, I think, I had to build broader and bigger tax base by promoting economic growth. That was number one thing that I felt like that I was running for one to give the business
judgment but also felt like we needed to promote economic development as such, help with our taxes, help build better stronger community from the standpoint of being more financially
sound and so forth. People worried about economic development because they afraid of it, all of a sudden they are going to be overrun with people but you know, you just can’t stand
still, you have to go forward or
you would go backward, and I don’t want to go backward. (35:44) That was one of my goals. Not go back to build broader, bigger tax base by promoting economic development. I want to continue
to pursue having the city known for their parks and recreation.. College Station has been known for that for a long time, I think that I wanted to see that continue. And I really want
to pursue beautification of community. You look out at my garden out there and see a bunch of flowers. I love… the… one of my favorite places is Scottsdale, Arizona. I’ve been there
a number of times and every time I ride around there I just wish, why can’t College Station be like this. I’ve been very little place to go there that always flowers in. College Station
did a good job, but we could do a better job. I just love to see that… where people came here just said, “Wow, this is outstanding looking place.” It doesn’t take that much more to
do that. You just have to have the mindset to do it. I wanted to develop a better relationship between College Station, Bryan, Brazos County. We’ve already talked about. I wanted to
improve city services and create a good service attitude among the city employees. I think that city employees should be like the clothing store with the reputation all over the United
States for service….. Nordstrom’s. I got on a kick in my company showing this film about Disney, Nordstrom about public service, not public service, customer service about taking care
of people. I mean, smile make them feel good. You know, why can’t our city employees do that? Why can’t we be like that? That’s what they’re there for, I mean, it’s not like that give
you a hard time. They should be making you feel really good about taking care of you. One way or the other. And I, you know, that something I wanted to do, I felt strong about it, Fred
Brown felt strong about it, but we made some improvement. I don’t know we never got to where I could say that we would get any write up like Nordstrom or anything like that. It makes
you feel like that not possible but it should be. I liked to get better relationship with A&M. And another thing was… I wanted try to create more professional type job for our kids
don’t have to move away. (38:42) Why should our kids that grew up here have to move away to get a job to themselves and I’ve stayed here then. That was, to me, a big goal. And then
I guess the last thing was to develop a better relationship between developers, builders and business people with other citizens together. Here’s thing in… maybe get a better understanding
from both sides where both types of people understand the needs, the wishes of each other and help this be a better city I guess ~~. So, that was it.
Q: Did you achieve your various goals?
A: Well, I wrote that here, you know what… I didn’t achieve them to the fullness that I would like, without question. I did feel that some good things happened… out of those things we
did get some economic development, we did get some better attitude about taking care of citizens, we did increase… we did do something about some of beautification way short from where
I wanted it to be.. But we did improve some of services we made improvement but not to my satisfaction.
Q: Did your goals change at all during your time in office?
A: Well, I don’t think that major goals change, but you know, we have smaller ones sort of crop up like the Bush Library. All of a sudden we did, we make the chance to get Bush Library
what are we do. And so we go out we named a street, we do a few other things. We tried to get A&M… make sure that A&M is positive about this and
so forth. Of course A&M was very active to do this, but you never know, I mean, and so we don’t know what part we had in that. But nevertheless some of… like that, things changed… things
I guess like a… try to get cheaper and cheaper utilities. We were able to get, what happen was that… the Gulf State utility company was doing a really good job, and all of a sudden
they raised the rates. Well, immediately, non-business people what did they… we had good service from them, and everybody liked them, we thought we were doing really good, all of a
sudden Gulf State comes along says, we’re going to have to raise rates.(41:36) We have some people in Council that weren’t business people they just got irate about it. They got it,
they said, they didn’t tell us about this. We haven’t budgeted for this. This is terrible. And I said well, “We don’t have to take it.” Let’s just tell him that “We don’t want to do
it. I mean, we don’t have to… who will we go with? Well~ business people you should back, we don’t want to do. Will you reconsider?” My dad had retired from Gulf State utility company.
Navasota, grew up in Navasota. I got him give me the name of some of the people at Gulf State, I called those people, I went to see him and they said they would reduce the rate. I came
back and a couple of Council people that already gone to BTU and they worked it out so that BTU would reduce the rates, but not like Gulf State. We got to discuss, that made me, because
of some politics, to the Council people they got name of some Bryan people and they said, “Dick, your dad is receiving a retirement from the Gulf State utility company, so you have
a conflict of interest” And I say what, “Let me just give you the information, I don’t care about talking about it” No, can’t even talk about it. Can’t even give us information. They
switched it to BTU, they left a million dollars on the table.(43:23) At the Gulf State, we had readjusted it and done it for a million dollar less than what they got it for. It just
blew my mind and I couldn’t do anything about it. And I know what the politics were involved in it with a Bryan situation. I know what it is. I won’t talk about it now, but I know...
Just terrible. That thing happened, and we can’t do anything about it.
Q: Do you have any regrets about things left unfinished?
A: Well, I think the biggest regret that I had is that we didn’t develop Wolf Pen Creek like we dreamed it could be… and Steve Beachy and I had a dream about it, and we were just so
excited about it and so forth. We can just see what it would do for the community and everything in fact we even had… there is an article that the… Insight wrote…. But anyway, just
what I had to say what was that we were working really hard on trying to get it done, but the city just basically said there were too many problems, you know, the cost of doing that
river walk type thing would just be too much… and it was… (Phone calling) (46:04)
Q: While we are on hold… this is always disappointed me, and I know so many people were... Was it that part of a bond issue or something?
A: Yes.
Q: Ok, and so many people were opposed to it… just I am sort of like you. I didn’t envision anything as big as... the San Antonio River Walk. But, I mean…
A: Oh, no. Let’s put it this way. If we had there is enough land on there that had little boats, this kind of stuff… you know I like paddle boats. There was all kind of little things
that could’ve happened right there, and if that stuff started happening, if the other stuff started building up around it, and then people come stay there, and you get a hotel… (46:58)
Q: Ok, So we’ve been talking about regrets about anything that was left unfinished.
A: I think that was a biggest disappointment to me was Wolf Pen Creek that we couldn’t make that happen. I don’t know there was one thing I think I missed out seeing I don’t know where
it would fit in exactly, but one thing we did do that I was instrumental in that was getting Lick Creek disposal plant put out here before Pebble Creek came in. And that’s the reason
Pebble Creek came in.(47:42) And the deal is that ~~~ we had good enough relationship several of us was on the Council with people like Bill Fitch and other developers that we knew
the developers if we would put the plant out here that they would come in and do this. You know there wasn’t any any signed and sealed contracts we knew that would. And there was a
one of the Council people said, “I teach municipal government this is absolutely the worst thing you could do in the world. You can’t do that. You do it, you move the city out like
this. And we said that what is they don’t wanna live right here. You got this spot over here where a golf course could go houses could go, it’s beautiful…... And that’s what they wanna
be, they don’t wanna be on the city limits. And as a result, that we approved it and it was a little risky and the extent that we put a lot of money out here, but look what happened.
I think that was the one of the things we brought to the table. (48:52)
Q: What did you enjoy the most or the least about being on the City Council?
A: I think the thing that enjoyed the most was being part of making things happen, just like Lick Creek park or Wolf Pen Creek. And then also trying to solve problems of the city like
utilities, I didn’t get to do that, but I could have if they had let me do it. And I guess what it amounts to is that… that’s what I enjoyed the most and I guess it’s what in some ways
then the parts that you enjoy the least is that probably the thing that I know my wife didn’t like either was….. if we had some kinds of meetings several times we get up in the morning,
look the paper and what they said, you said, didn’t sound quite right. That was probably the most non-enjoyable part, but I think that being a part of what was going on and trying to
make things better I enjoyed that very much. (50:20)
Q: Did you find it difficult to make the transition to a more private life?
A: I thought about that I guess what a… to some degree, I’ve always been active, I’m still involved in stuff. It’s not like I didn’t have anything to do. But I would be less than honest
to say that I didn’t enjoy some of the public attention, you know, I’ve never really done that before. When you went places, where people seem to think a
little more of you, want to talk to you little more than they did before. So I think all that was certainly enjoyable, I liked it. (51:11)
Q: What are you proudest of in your life of public service?
A: Well… I thought about that. And I guess the proudest thing is that I think I served in an honorable way that I was honest and truly cared about the city. In some small way, I feel
like I’ve helped the city be better. Nothing monumental but in a small way I felt like that I may have helped things happen, made the City of College Station better. I feel good about
that. (52:02)
Q: What are your current projects?
A: What I’ve been involved in right now is… Bloomberg you know who put out all his information and news information and so forth, it’s talking about basically the economic downturn,
and what’s going on in United States and so forth. The percentage of very poor increased in 300 of nations, 360 metro areas just over, but three of the five metropolitan areas with
highest percentage of very poor people in 2010 were within Texas. The College Station–Bryan metro area, home to Texas A&M, had the greatest concentration of very poor people in the
nation. With 16.4% of the residents earning the less than half of the federal poverty rate. We got the poorest people and they are getting poorer in the nation. (53:40) And basically,
what we thought was generated that was students. And I guess what it boils down to is that we have a tremendous amount of people that do working, but they are working for wages that
were in poverty level wages, minimum wages, $13,000 a year, something like this. And so I got involved in the effort of trying to do something about substandard housing, because we
got like 3,000 substandard houses in Bryan-College Station. And some of those in A&M College Station are students housing, but there is also other houses. And in an effort to do something,
what I began to feel that some of programs were available like a Section 8 for rental subsidy and so forth… They don’t have any more money they can’t increase any help, so what really
needs to happen is these people need to get better jobs, and we can take the people that are working and making poverty wages and move them into better jobs and move people who have
no jobs into the lower income jobs, at least that would help a little bit and then eventually get them moved into better paying jobs. Then I think, the whole community is gonna be better.
(55:23) Number 2, I think we can suddenly start building houses they could rent that would be decent houses, not substandard houses. So what I’ve done I’ve gone to Dennis Gering who’s
head of the Bryan Business Council. And Dennis has bought into the idea, he thinks of the same to the some of the industry comes in the Bryan, “Hey, if you gonna be helping out tax
wise, we gonna do this and this and that, we want you to hire at least 10% of people or 15% of people from this lower income area. (56:04) And do the same thing in College Station.
So what do David Neely and Jim Simpson, and talked to them about this and they seemed to be ok with the idea, excited about the idea. So hopefully we can get this, economic developers
to buy into the idea that we need to get this group of people working in some of those jobs that become available when we go out and recruit. (56:35) Right now, Libby, if you… the workforce
group solution over at the COG, Council of Governments, if somebody moves in and is going to hire hundreds of people they just send information over there,
there will be 4,000 applicants. Because it’s 4~5 counties they will represent, and this group of people were talking about will never get the job. So we’ve got a… and what we trying
to do now in addition to that, we need some help, we need some labor, we need some people to go out and visit with these, identify these families, these people were workers, and help
teach them some skills about how to apply for a job, how to do this and that, how to dress, how to be dependable. If your job start at 8 be there at 7:30, not 8:10, and then get different
things done like that… (phone calling) But anyway, I guess what it boils down to... So what I’m trying to do is organize some of the churches, hopefully get the churches, working with
SOS ministries, they’ve agreed to jump into these things with us, and so we got SOS ministries, they’re going to help with churches to try to help get volunteers, and then we got both
economic development people from both cities, to try to do this, and then we gonna try to get that all coordinated and come up with a program to help create better jobs. (58:25)
Q: Thank you so much.
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