HomeMy WebLinkAboutBlanche Brick Transcription
City of College Station
Heritage Programs Oral History
Interviewee: Dr. Blanche Brick
Interviewer: Tiffany Gonzalez
Date: February 6, 2019
Place: Municipal Court Building Room 204, College Station, Texas
Project: The City of College Station Oral History Collection
Transcriber: Ian Seavey
Abstract: Former Council member Dr. Blanch Brick recounts two terms (2011-2017) serving on the City Council of College Station. She explains how living in many various countries around
the world and graduating from Texas A&M with her PhD in the history of education helped her develop an interest in politics. She was Division Chair of Social Sciences and taught history
at Blinn College during her time on the Council and retired 6 months before her second term ended. In concluding, she gives some sage advice for those who are interested in public service
and running for public office.
00:00 Tiffany Gonzalez (TG): My name is Tiffany Gonzalez. I am College Station’s Historical Records Archivists and the interviewer. It is 9:53 a.m. on February 6, 2019. We are conducting
the interviewer at Municipal Court Building Room 204.
00:30 Blanche Brick (BB): I’m Blanche Brick, former member of the City Council.
00:31: TG: Thank you so much for meeting with me today to do this oral interview. To start off this oral interview for Project HOLD, can you start off with explaining and telling me
when and where you were born?
00:42: BB: Yes, I was born in Longview, Texas, in 1939.
00:49: TG: And to go into your family history, can you tell me the names of your parents?
00:54: BB: Uh, my parents were Lewis and Blanche Henderson. And uh, my father was superintendent of an oil field near Longview and my family had been in Longview since before the Civil
War. My great-grand parents had come out to Texas from South Carolina and were there by the 1850s. They had lived in the area for a long time. I have one half-brother, Richard, who
was sixteen years older than I. And my half-brother was 18 on December the 4th, 1941. And
uh, of course Pearl Harbor came on December the 7th so this half-brother ended up flying in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Flying both bomber planes and finally at the end of
the war, he flew fighter planes during the Battle of Bulge.
2:12: TG: Wow. To back tract a little bit, you spoke about your father being a supervisor. What did your mom do?
2:21: BB: My mom was a homemaker until my father was killed in an automobile accident in the oil fields. I was in the eighth grade. And after my father’s death, my mother went to work
as a secretary to the principal at the high school and then later she worked in the office of an oil company that was owned by her brother-in-law, F.R. Jackson there in Longview.
2:46: TG: Okay. And so did you only have one-half brother?
2:50: BB: Yes and I had lots of cousins.
2:55: TG: Do you. Can you recall any favorable memories of growing up that you want to share?
2:59: BB: Many. Um. [Laughing] but I don’t know which ones to share. We grew up really just very near the center of Longview. We grew up on a street called Fredonia Street. We walked
to school. We had neighborhood friends. We were allowed to roam pretty freely then. Walked to the movies on Saturday afternoons if we had mowed enough of the grass to get the ten cents
required to get to the movie. Uh, double feature cowboy movies. So it was a wonderful town to grow up in. Our church was also between us and downtown and we spent a lot of time there.
Uh in Sunday school as well as church and other church meetings.
3:51: TG: Nice. Do you have any memories, recollections about your education, primary school and then junior high, high school that you would like to share?
4:04: BB: Yes, I have great memories of going to school in Longview. As I said, we walked from our house to the school my elementary school was just beside what we called the junior
high. For essentially nine years, I was in the same location and I had friends today that I was in school with from the very beginning. And that still live in Longview or live around
the world. But because we were in school together for such a long time and then went out to high school as well. It was a very supportive group, a very close knit group, we knew each
other, we pretty much knew who could do what. And that has good advantages, and some disadvantages because you get into a routine. But I look on it as a very positive experience. We
had wonderful teachers. I often wondered today how they find enough teachers for all the different schools but somehow Longview was not a large town. It was probably 30,000-40,000 at
that time. Somehow they came up with wonderful teachers. Not everyone but on the whole, they were inspiring and I’m talking about all the way from elementary through junior high and
in high school. We had teachers who really loved their subjects. And who really held you accountable for doing the work. Of course our parents were heavily involved in the schools,
going to Halloween carnivals, putting on cake walks, whatever it took to keep things going. So you had a real community involvement in the schools and you knew you were going to be
held accountable by the schools and by the parents.
06:02: TG: That’s important. Very important. What was the name of your primary school and junior high, and high school?
06:07: BB: My elementary school was Campus Ward and my – actually I skipped the first grade. I went to a nursery school. My birthday was in November. So they just shot me on from there
to the second grade where I started Campus Ward. And went to Foster Junior High School, named from a former superintendent of the schools there. And then to Longview High School.
06:36: TG: Thank you. So growing up, once you went into high school, what were your plans of what you wanted to do after high school?
06:45: BB: Well I knew I wanted to go to college. And it was pretty, my family was Baptist. And it was pretty well decided that I would go to Baylor. And uh, so that’s where I went to
college. I didn’t have strong desire to be a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, but I loved learning. So I thought teaching would be a good way to go. And as I said, I had some very
inspiring and good teachers, I loved English and I loved History. So those were the areas that I was most interested in studying.
07:21: TG: What year did you start at Baylor?
07:22: BB: I graduated from high school in the spring of 1957 began the fall of ‘57 at Baylor. And graduated in 1961. And actually, I had a very good time at Baylor, enjoyed it a great
deal, and had friends that went there from my hometown but also from other areas around that I knew including older cousins who had gone who was like an older brother to me. So it was
uh it was an extension of family. But I also enjoyed it a great deal, but I didn’t buckle down to studying until my junior year. (Laugh) And by that time, I was very much more interested
in History and English as I said. And so I realized when I graduated that I was just really ready to start learning in those areas and I was needing to do graduate work. So I taught
for a time, and then went back to graduate school. And I went to graduate school first, I, I went to. Well I started at Baylor in American Studies which I thought was a good blend of
History and English. But then I left at the semester because my uncle who had been kind of like a second father to me passed away. And I went home to teach and lived with my aunt, while
she went through a transition getting through the business affairs and all of that. And then I eventually ended going to George Washington University in D.C. and studying there for
my first master’s and I took mostly history courses, but I took education as well because I was teaching at the high school level. And then I ended up working in Washington D.C. for
a U.S. Senator. So I stayed in Washington until I got married in 1968. So from 1963 I was in Washington and at times back in Texas working in the Senator’s offices as well.
09:47: TG: That sounds like a very interesting event that you experienced so I’d like to talk about, before getting into moving to Washington D.C. You mentioned teaching before going
into grad school at Baylor. Where were you teaching? Did you stay in Baylor?
10:03: BB: No, when I first graduated from Baylor I was teaching in Dallas. And then after a year of teaching there I decided I wanted to go back to graduate school, actually I went
to Europe that summer to meet my cousin who had been in school in Vienna. And I took the GRE in Paris.
I went back to Baylor as I said to do the degree in American Studies. But then I ended up going home at the end of the semester to live with my aunt. And so when I went back I didn’t
go to Baylor in the meantime I’d gotten interested in more history at George Washington University.
10:46: TG: How was your experience living in D.C. during that time?
10:49: BB: I loved it. It was very interesting. I found it a way to really understand how the government works and especially once I went to work on Capitol Hill in the Senate office
and trying to really understand what was accomplished in committees, and what was accomplished on the floor, what was accomplished just in meetings. I’ve always been interested in how
the government worked. I’ve always had an interest in community affairs all the way up to the national level and how we made things work and our history and how our history set this
all up.
11:32: TG: Absolutely. So you stayed until 1968 working for the Senator, which Senator was it?
11:40: BB: I worked for Ralph Yarborough from Texas. A Democratic Senator.
11:45: TG: Thank you. And then you said you left because you got married.
11:49: BB: Right.
11:50: TG: And that follows into a question I have is, how did you meet your husband?
11:53: BB: I actually met him when we were both teaching in Longview. And he and I taught there until ’65 as I said, I was going to summer school at GW (George Washington University)
during those years but not full time. And at that point he had been in the Peace Corps in Ceylon which is Sri Lanka now but I had spent the summer of ’64 Indonesia with the Southern
Baptist Convention working at their publishing house there. Publishing English materials and all and living with missionaries there. But trying to understand, it’s a time when America
was very involved abroad and felt very optimistic about taking democracy to the rest of the world and the Peace Corps was a big part of that. But I thought also the missionary efforts
there and so I spent the summer there and when he came to teach in Longview in the fall of ’64 he and I were about the only ones who spent much time in Asia so we met by looking at
each other’s slides and talking about what we learned about what the Asian countries were like and what they thought of America. And then after that he decided to go back into the Peace
Corps and he went to the Philippines. And I at that point thought about doing that with him but then I wanted to finish my degree at George Washington and so I did that. In the meantime
we decided we really needed to get back together and so when he came home we married in January of ’68.
13:59: TG: Wow.
14:00: BB: And he came home on a leave because he had extended and I actually went back to the Philippines with him because he was working as a staff member then. We lived in the Philippines
and our first home was in Zambiabga in the southern Philippines on the island of Mindanao. But we were only there six months and that was over and from there we went to Honolulu, Hawaii
where he entered graduate school to do a masters and a PhD in Marine Zoology. I completed a second Master’s degree at the University, also – in US history while teaching history at
Farrington High School in Honolulu.
14:33: TG: Okay, interesting. How was it living in the Philippines and then Hawaii?
14:39: BB: It was very challenging [laugh] fascinating, I mean living on a Peace Corps salary and living in a nipa hut is challenging. You go to the market everyday but a beautiful place,
a beautiful place lots a good skin diving, snorkeling. He had a sailboat one of those out rigger canoe sailboats and he loved to scuba dive too. I didn’t do any scuba diving but it
was a beautiful place for that. But he really enjoyed his time with the people in the Philippines and he had been organizing a teacher’s college program there for science teachers which
is why he extended. It was an interesting time because Americans were considered good at that point in time in the afterglow of WWII and the freeing of those areas. It would become
more challenging later during the Vietnam War period and even in Honolulu there was a lot of anti-war sentiment and things would begin to change quite a bit about the view of Americans
especially in Asian countries. I think that’s sometime around the year when the novel the Ugly American came out. And it had a major impact, it sort of outlined the major reasons for
the changes in views in Americans.
16:19: TG: Surely, yes. So after your husband graduated from graduate school from Hawaii is that when you moved to College Station? Or how did you make your trek here?
16:30: BB: We came to College Station in 1975, when he joined the faculty in Texas A&M’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences. His area that he had done his Ph.D. was shrimp
physiology and culture. We were here until 1980 and then he accepted a position at a private company that wanted to do commercial shrimp culture in Illinois. And so we were living
in Illinois for a couple of years there just south of Chicago. And then the recession in the ‘80s hit the private company and they really didn’t have the money to continue it so at
that point he accepted a job back in Hawaii at the Oceanic Institute at Sea Life Park and worked there for a while as a researcher. And after being in Hawaii for a time he was offered
a position by a private company to go Karachi, Pakistan as a consultant in shrimp culture under a loan from the Asian Development Bank. And by this time we had two children [laugh]
so it was challenging but it seemed interesting so we went and we were in Karachi for a total of about three years. Some of that time I was back here. My step father passed away so
I came back for some of that. And the children, finally when my daughter was entering high school we decided to bring her back to go to high school here. So some of it was commuting
long distance. But it was a challenging place to live, Karachi. The had declared martial law just before we got there and it’s always been more or less in a state of martial law. But
it’s very interesting, the children found very quickly adapted. At first they thought they were going to die because they didn’t have T.V. You know they would fly in information, we
would watch NFL football games a week late that were flown in and passed around on video tape. But we took a lot of tapes with us so they could watch a movie but they didn’t have live
television and we found out that was a really good withdrawal. They went to the American school in Karachi and participated in sports, in band, in different activities, in plays and
all. And it actually gave them more time to do that.
19:12: TG: And more creative, creative art.
19:13: BB: And we were actually able to have more good time with them because they weren’t locked into an instrument.
19:21: TG: I see, absolutely. You mentioned your children, can you speak a little about their names?
19:26: BB: Yes.
19:26: TG: Where they were born and their birthdate?
19:28: BB: Our daughter is Kathleen and she was born in 1970 in Honolulu. And she was four years old when she came to College Station. And our son’s name is John and he was born in Bryan,
that’s where the only hospital in the area in 1976 in St. Joseph’s.
20:09: TG: Thank you. Y’all have traveled a lot.
20:12: BB: Right we have.
20:13: TG: Since after.
20:13: BB: We have traveled a lot and we’ve enjoyed it. It has a lot of challenges to it.
20:18: TG: Absolutely.
20:19: BB: But it gives you another view of the United States and of yourself really. And at the same time we have tried to keep some roots for the children so they felt like they had
a hometown. Their growing up experience in College Station was not like mine in Longview but by being pretty much based here they had friends they knew throughout school and they both
actually live in college station now.
20:51: TG: That’s fantastic. So after your husband found a position after the recession in Illinois y’all moved to Hawaii. How long were y’all in Hawaii?
21:02: BB: A year before we went to Pakistan.
21:05: TG: Pakistan, so what’s the link how did y’all eventually come back to College Station?
21:12: BB: It’s very difficult to trace it all [laughs] but we went back from Pakistan to Hawaii where he was Aquaculture Coordinator at the University of Hawaii for a period of time.
And then he was offered an opportunity to come back here and work with a company that was doing agriculture. And that’s when we came back here. By that time the children were. I wanted
them to have a little bit more of a home base here. We loved Hawaii, we still love it but it was difficult experience in some ways. You couldn’t buy a house there it was very expensive,
the price of land. They went to the public schools and they were good public school and I taught in them once when I was there, twice I taught in public schools there. But there were
a lot of cultural challenges among the different ethnic groups. It was good for them though to know what it felt like to be a minority ethnic group you know. And something they wouldn’t
have experienced here. But then we came back here. We’ve been here and Bob has done some consulting work after that in Indonesia but basically we’ve been here. He’s come and gone
22:35: TG: When did y’all finally settle down back in the area? What year was that?
22:38: BB: Oh, I’m trying to remember the exact dates. I should have looked that up. I don’t know the exact dates.
22:44: TG: That’s fine.
22:45: BB: But in the 1980s – around 1986.
22:47: TG: Okay.
22:48: BB: When my daughter entered high school as I said. I can’t remember the exact date but I think she graduated in ’89, I’m not sure. From high school. She won’t like that, hearing
me say I don’t remember that dat.
23:02: TG: [Laughing] so when you moved back Dr. Brick, what was your everyday lifestyle? What were you doing?
23:14: BB: When we moved back in the ‘80s, I began teaching at A&M Consolidated High School and later at Blinn College. When we first moved to College Station in 1976, I got a job at
the university as an information officer. They were just opening the medical school and I was working for the new dean of medicine there. I had worked for the University of Hawaii while
we were there and I taught school for a time a very large high school. But then I ended up working on a master’s degree. I did a master’s in history, so that was my second master’s.
At the University of Hawaii and I eventually ended up working there for the president of the University of Hawaii as a special assistant. So I became very interested in the whole educational
structure. They were creating community colleges at that time in Hawaii. And the whole idea of equal educational opportunity, what was it? How did you grant equal educational opportunity?
There was a great deal of emphasis on that and Affirmative Action and all of those policies. So I really wanted to continue doing graduate work, basically in the history of education.
So when I came here I had the job in the medical school but I also took courses part time for graduate work.
24:47: TG: What department?
24:49: BB: I was in Education Curriculum and Instruction, but it was in an area called foundations of education with special interest in the history of education. Which meant I took
a lot of my courses in history and philosophy as well. So it was very good, it was challenging but I had a young son as well and a daughter in elementary school but trying to balance
out a care schedule for him was important. So somehow it all worked and when he was old enough to start in day school, he went to daycare at our church. I took him on the bicycle and
picked him up on the bicycle [laughing]. And would ride it home, we lived in Southwood Valley. Not too far but a pretty good ride to campus.
25:52: TG: That’s pretty neat. Does he remember anything?
25:56: BB: I think he remembers some because later I remember I got a Pooch moped. Well it was a motorized kind of bike, it was a scooter, a motor scooter. I think he remembers more
riding on that.
26:09: TG: [Laughing] That’s so fun.
26:12: BB: [Laughs]
26:14: TG: Well, thank you, yeah. So you started your PhD working? When did you finally graduate with your PhD?
26:20: BB: I finished all the coursework by 1980 and that’s when we moved to Illinois. So I spent the next two years writing the dissertation. And I would go to the University of Chicago,
we were maybe an hour South of it then and I would go at least twice a week and work in the library there at the University of Chicago. And I attended or audited, or sat in on classes
there because of course, the Dewey Laboratory School was located there, so they had all the work on Horace Mann and John Dewey so it was very helpful to me because my dissertation was
on Changing Concepts of Equal Educational Opportunity: A Comparison of Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, and John Dewey. Their different views of what constituted an equal educational
opportunity at different points in our history.
27:26: TG: Mhm.
27:27: BB: So I was trying to combine the history and the educational policies.
27:32: TG: That’s pretty cool.
27:33: BB: So that’s what I did. I did that and got the kids to school. Tried to keep things together in that way.
27:42: TG: That’s a lot of balancing.
27:45: BB: It took a little bit, yes.
27:46: TG: That’s a strict schedule [laughing]. Absolutely.
27:50: BB: But I defended my dissertation and graduated here in ’83.
27:57: TG: How did you feel that day?
28:00: BB: How did I feel?
28:00: TG: Yeah.
28:01: BB: I felt very happy. I did not actually attend graduation, however, because we were on our way back to Hawaii.
28:02: Both: [Laughing].
28:03: BB: To have it done. It was a challenge, it was before we had computers really but they were beginning to type of these machines that they could at least erase things only they
didn’t have to use carbon paper. You know I can’t remember the exact name of it now. At any rate it’s not like I had it on a CD or a disk or something. So I’ve had to scan in a lot
of it to get it online. Because I’ve written papers with it and written papers out of it. And to have it to work with but
that was just at the beginning of that time period the change from straight typewriter. It’s hard to believe how people got things done back then before computers.
28:53: TG: I make a lot of mistakes so I don’t know if I would survive on the typewriter for my dissertation.
28:58: BB: I don’t know either it’s just amazing. You spent a lot of time and you didn’t research everything online. You went to the library and got the books of the shelf.
29:09: TG: A card catalog.
29:10: BB: And you used a card catalog and luckily the stacks were open at A&M and at Chicago. So you could go into the stacks, look up the card catalog and find ten books you were going
to spend the day with. Go in the stacks get them off and take your sandwich. And you sat back in the stacks and read all day and took notes.
29:33: TG: Yep, that process still sounds very familiar [laugh]. Except the card catalog. I think they got rid of card catalogs.
29:39: BB: Yeah.
29:40: TG: Everything is online. The grueling process is still the same.
29:43: BB: Yeah.
29:47: TG: Great. So after that you became a doctor in 1983?
29:55: BB: Yes.
29:56: TG: And then what happened? Y’all moved back?
30:00: BB: We moved back to Hawaii.
30:02: TG: And then back to College Station? You worked for the administrators?
30:08: BB: Let me see. ’83? We left College Station in ’80.
30:17: TG: Mhm.
30:18: BB: That’s when I worked for the college of medicine when we moved here in ’76 to ’80 when we left. ’83 we went back to Hawaii. I’m trying to get that straight the dates. From
’80 until we moved back to Hawaii in ’83 we were in Illinois. Then we came here defended and went back, yeah. And from there Pakistan and then back eventually back here as I said with
a private company. And then out of that I started when we came back the last period of time I started teaching U.S. history at Blinn College. I taught there, part time, for quite a
few years. And then became full time and eventually became division chair of social sciences at Blinn College. For about 25 years I was Division Chair of Social Sciences. I started
with Blinn in downtown Bryan, they moved out to the old Sears building at Townshire that’s on Texas Avenue in Bryan. And from there to the campus they are now.
32:05: TG: I’m only familiar with the one they are at now.
32:08: BB: Yeah.
32:11: TG: How did you like working at Blinn College?
32:15: BB: I liked it because it allowed me to focus on teaching history, which is what I wanted to do and be involved in educational policy. By trying to work with somewhat of an administrative
role, as well argue for what I thought was good for students and faculty. In that sense, I really enjoyed it because it put a big focus on teaching, and you were directly involved with
your students. You did the grading and the classes were kept to about 30 to 35. A size that was reasonable, however you did teach five classes if you were full time. As I became administrator
though they didn’t call it that because I was still teaching, but ultimately I ended up where I was just teaching one class per semester and serving Division Chair of Social Sciences.
And the reason the teaching load went down was because the number of people you were supervising went up. I had about 80 faculty in the division of social sciences. It wasn’t just history.
33:33: TG: The social sciences department?
33:34: BB: Yeah, they put Anthropology, Geography, Psychology, Sociology, Government, and History all together.
33:36: TG: That’s a lot. What did working as division chair teach you or prepare you for Council later on? What skills or knowledge?
33:48: BB: Well, as I said teaching was always about our history.
33:52: TG: Mhm.
33:53: BB: About how we had become who we are. And that involved, my special interests both education and religious history and how that contributed to making us the people we were.
I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of where we had come from. Now that doesn’t give you an understanding of all the issues involved in any one time and place. But it gives
you an overall view what is important. What are you trying to preserve what you are trying to improve and accomplish. And the purpose of government and in mind the purpose is to serve
the people. And to improve the best we can everyone’s life. Whether it’s through a government program or not creating a government program. But I think I had a wonderful opportunity
to really understand the different periods of our history. The Progressive period and why certain changes were made that took us away from a totally “laissez faire” approach to government.
And why certain changes in the time of the New Deal were made due to economic problems. Many people opposed it then and still opposed it later. But trying to grapple with the pros and
the cons gave me a better understanding of these issues. I don’t think any one side in government has all the answers, any one political view.
I always said that, “democracy was not a winner take all game.” It was an opportunity for us to work together to find the best solution not a perfect solution. I think Churchill was
right, “Democracy is a terrible form of government it’s just better than anything else we have tried.” But it’s messy, it’s wasteful, it takes a lot of time to consult with all the
different groups. And yet
at the bottom line somebody has to make decisions and elections are very frustrating at times because trying to get messages out and get people to focus on issues enough to really understand
them rather than to simply be swayed by or by easy opportunities or demagogy type promises is a challenge. So that was always an interest of mine going in. I ran for state government
in 2010. Of course, I had become really frustrated, we had a local representative here who had been elected unopposed for six terms. And I was so frustrated because I felt like he did
not understand education at all, and here was representing a community that was geared to be a major educational center in Texas. And we needed more of a voice. So at that point I ran
in 2010, of course I didn’t win. No one in Bryan knew my name to vote for me. Although I got good support from College Station. And as a result of that in trying to articulate the issues
I saw at the state level, which is what I was interested in as an educational policy. In that election the Tea Party had come onto the scene, and I began to realize the real challenges
that were there for trying to articulate any kind of a so called conservative view because the Tea Party’s view was far to the right of what had been conservative [laugh].
And at any rate, out of that I made a commitment to stay involved in politics and local affairs and was asked to run by several people for City Council. I was pretty hesitant because
having run a campaign in 2010 for a State Representative position is not cheap. The district 13 was all of Bryan/College Station that’s what it encompassed. So it wasn’t spread out
in a rural area all the way to Waco as part of the district is now. But at any rate it is still not a cheap thing to do and it’s very time consuming. And I was not excited of the idea
of trying to do this on the local level. As I already said I was more interested I state and national having studied more of that. But I decided after talking with several people and
seeing the condition of discussion the local discussions that were going on largely because of this push, I felt, from a very far right group that was sort of skewing the conservative
side of the conversation. Thus I decided that I would run. I was asked by the person who had been on the Council especially to run for that seat. And so at any rate I did and I tried
to articulate the views as best as I could and tried to learn as much as I could. I had been involved with city politics only on a peripheral basis. I got involved first because Bee
Creek was right behind my house and our kids would walk across the drainage pipe to go to Bee Creek to play and I wanted the city to build a bridge there [laughs]. And so I got involved
trying to get the city to do that, which they did. Then later we had moved out into Foxfire. And there was a major issue that came to the city over Wal-Mart moving over to where Scott
& White is now. It was called the Weingarten or Wal-Mart issue, and neighborhoods around that area got very involved. And I felt strongly that really we had a good location for Wal-Mart
where it was. And that we needed to use that land in different ways other than just having one store leave one vacant and create another. I felt there were better uses for it. And at
any rate that ended up being a huge city issue and I got involved in supporting that. I liked Wal-Mart, I wanted them in the community but I felt they were in the community [laughs].
41:22: TG: Absolutely. How did you, so to talk about your campaign in 2011. How did you start campaigning for that?
41:32: BB: Well, pretty much like I campaigned for State Representative. I had a lot of the literature and the ideas left from the 2010 materials and I just campaigned on a city-wide
basis
for it by going to all the different forums that are held by different neighborhood groups, chamber of commerce, different groups that put on a forum and let you have dialogue with citizens.
Several citizens held meetings in their homes, I went to those, visited with citizens. I had a lot of help, my children helped a great deal in walking neighborhoods. By that time I
had had two knee replacements. So walking neighborhoods wasn’t a good option for me. But they did a lot of that along with my husband. I made some radio ads and I think one T.V. ad
that was played. I campaigned basically on civility and common sense and support for sustainable growth. I had those issues and I said that I felt like if we lost the civility, the
civil dialogue in our democratic process we weren’t going to solve anything. I think we are seeing that on the national level. That without a civil discourse on both sides the democratic
process isn’t going to work. And so I was very concerned about that and that was one of the reasons I decided I would run for office.
43:18: TG: Thank you. And so what was the final voting results? And who was your opponent? If you had an opponent.
43:25: BB: My first opponent was Shawn Rhodes and I don’t remember exactly, but I think I won by about 70 something percent of the vote. I’m not sure. All of a sudden, I’ve gone blank
on my opponents name on the second race but Gabriel Garcia, young man who was a student at A&M. And a very nice young man who a certain group in the Republican Party wanted to run.
These are non-partisan races but a group thought that we weren’t conservative enough, thought I wasn’t conservative enough. And at any rate, he ran. And the big issue by that time had
become kind of a neighborhood discussion of how do we preserve neighborhoods because we were getting so much push for rezoning and the Aggie shack issue was beginning to pop up. So
I had become a spokesman for neighborhood integrity, although I tried to run as a person who listened to both sides for sustainable growth. I think my voting record showed that I voted
more for business than some others who on the business side voted for neighborhood issues. I had a more moderate voting record but I had become a spokesman at that point for some neighborhoods
who would come to the Council sharing their concerns. And generally is seems that they were told, “Well you should have gotten involved earlier in the process.” But they didn’t know
it was happening until the notice went out to rezone the property. And when the notice went out it then the process was a year in play because of obviously to get it up to that point
the developers had to be working with city staff. So it came to my attention, that there wasn’t quite a level playing field there.
We needed to come up with a better process for letting them get involved earlier and understand the pros and cons and have input into it. And then not just come to the Council and be
told, “it’s too late you can’t do much about this because we spent all of this time and money and everything.” You know when I went on the Council, my first term on the Council, I will
say this, I want to say this right up front that, Nancy Berry, Nancy Berry was the Mayor and she gave some very sage advice, “do your homework, find out what you don’t know, ask questions,
find out from the staff, and then vote your conscience.” And I will say that she followed that and I appreciated that advice. We did not always come out on the same place in the vote,
we differed on those several issues at times but always did it in a civil way and I always appreciated her
holding everyone to that sort of standard. But the mantra on the Council pretty much was, “growth pays for itself.” And I kept seeing that we were getting more and more budget deficits
and growth wasn’t paying for itself and yet we would be told in two years we would get a return on growth of sales taxes, property taxes and we had to rezone all the property that we
could to get more of these taxes on it. Yet every year our budget was reflecting the fact that we were having to borrow more and more money. And bond for more and more issues because
growth wasn’t paying. I was also frequently told that roads follow development. And I kept saying that once you get the development it’s much harder to develop the roads. We need to
look at roads and what’s coming and get ready for it a little bit ahead of time. Which meant that sometimes it would slow down development, which wasn’t appreciated and I understand
that. If I had a development that I was trying to get through on a certain amount of money and I wanted to get done as quickly as possible. I don’t blame that side for pushing that
but I think all sides have to look at the benefits for the whole city and say, “yes we would like to have growth, we would like to have development, but we would also like to be able
to afford it and we would like for everyone to pay their fair share.”
Many argued that it wasn’t fair to ask businesses to pay more because they would be bringing in this development that would then bring all these taxes in. What I kept seeing was that
since 2000 at least, our budgets had not shown that growth had paid for itself even though we had been growing at a very high rate for a city. And so I began, for my second term, to
push for considering impact fees. The Council had considered impact fees before my term started not to adopt impact fees. Now we had five areas that did have impact fees in the city.
We had five areas where people had actually asked, “Could they contribute to making that area work by bringing sewer lines, water lines, roads, whatever it took to make that area accommodate
development.” So they could open businesses in those areas. But those were not city wide, they didn’t apply to all new development. The idea was the recession had hit too many people
in 2008 and a majority of the Council did not feel they could adopt impact fees at that point in time.
So in my term I picked that up and I said I think we need to look at it again and began looking at it. And we actually established an impact fee advisory committee which was the Planning
& Zoning Commission plus citizens who were appointed to work on that committee. And they looked at it and we hired a consultant for waste water and on roads and a separate consultant
on transportation. They hired two different groups to tell us whether impact fees made sense for our community. And obviously there was a lot of opposition especially in the development
community to adopting impact fees because they would be asked to pay more of the cost. Now the state law that created impact fees says that you can never ask the development community
to pay more than 50% of the cost of that development. So it turned out the impact fees we adopted were only going to cover something like 10% of the 50%. But it was the idea that developers
had not been paying any impact fees and once you adopted those fees you could increase them. I should also say that Dave Coleman as Director of Water and Wastewater Facilities and Alan
Gibbs as the City Engineer did a tremendous job of explaining the pros and cons of these impact fees for water and for transportation.
51:26: TG: You could or couldn’t increase them?
51:27: BB: You could. And so the idea was don’t adopt them at all. But we did adopt them and they took a year before they went into effect. And the road fees before they went into effect
there was another push by some members of Council who did not support them to set them at zero. Actually that’s what P&Z had recommended the first time around but that meant you didn’t
really have them but you adopted the idea. At any rate I argued at that time that we didn’t we had a capital improvement committee. We used this committee to look at what are our needs
are and prioritize them. They looked at our needs in facilities, they looked at transportation, and they looked at parks. And I participated in the transportation committee. I want
to say this on the side that when I went on the Council I was asked to be the chair of the bike and pedestrian committee and I said I also want to serve on the transportation committee
and I was told there was really no transportation committee, there was bike/pedestrian committee. And I said that’s not how most people travel. We needed transportation, we had had
one for different reasons, some political, some internal they had abolished that committee. So I fought for a year to try to get it reestablished and finally the mayor and the city
manager agreed that we would reestablish that committee. So we did, and we had a transportation committee and through that committee was how I was pushing this and also just as a member
of the Council. But that transportation section of the capital improvement programs had recommended, this is a citizen’s advisory committee, they had found $140 million that needed
to be improved. Out of that they honed it down and recommended $70 million. And out of that the city had agreed to support a bond issue for $50 million to improve what we had and to
meet new demands in transportation.
54:00: TG: Bond issue to the public?
54:01: BB: Yes.
54:02: TG: Can you explain?
54:03: BB: [Interrupting] The State Legislature in 2015 intervened and passed a law that said if you take a bond issue to the public and they turn it down you cannot finance that issue
in other ways for the next three years. The idea was to protect the integrity of the citizen’s vote. In other words, that’s what citizens vote on, and then they have certificates of
obligation which the city council can offer without taking it to a public vote if their bond rating is okay? What happened as a result of that law is a good example of a law that had
good intentions but had unintended consequences because most cities said we won’t go to a citizens’ vote because if the citizens turn it down then we’re stuck. The citizens had turned
down previously the bond issue for city hall. So people here were sensitive to that kind of issue and are very committed to getting a police station built and afraid that would interfere.
My feeling was then, and I will say this for the record, my feeling was I did not fear taking it to the public. I did not fear if they turned it down waiting for three years; I felt
we ought to look at it and do it in that time frame. I will say also though for the public record that when it came back and Council voted on it, I voted to support the certificates
of obligation because there was no support on Council delaying the funding of the new police station. So that may seem duplicitous but I wanted the thing to go forward even though I
would have not minded at all waiting three years if the citizens had turned it down, and I argued at first that we should leave it as a general bond issue vote and if it got turned
down for three years then it got turned down. However when it came to the Council to vote for the
certificates of obligation, I voted for them. I was not opposed to funding a new police station. I just had major concerns over the location and over the means of funding it.
56:28: TG: Okay.
56:30: BB: Complicated issues, and this is why people don’t understand, people get fixated on I voted for this and against this period black, white and they’re not willing to look and
say what were the implications if you didn’t do this or if you did that? What were your choices? Some of it becomes so pragmatic that you have no principles and that’s not any good
either because you run it on promises that you’ve made and you’re trying to keep them as best you can. I think the city has moved forward but they have not been as proactive as I have
wanted them to be in listening to citizen’s concerns because they knew it was not going to citizens’ vote on a general obligation bond. So I recommended establishing a public workshop
that would require the city actually based on a workshop I had found at San Marcos, California where you brought neighborhoods that would be impacted by the development in at the beginning
they had a chance to be involved. Now understand developers don’t want that happening. You can see how that’s going to slow the process but I think there is a way that it can be done,
and we actually had some developers in regard to Margrave Ranch now called Greens Prairie Reserve do this. I remember there was a great deal of opposition to that development out on
Arrington Road with the Nantucket Group and to their credit Oldham and Goodwin did hold what they called a charrette where they brought in the neighbors and said this is what we are
proposing to do. The neighbors didn’t like it, they didn’t approve it, but they had a say in it. They couldn’t say we had no warning until the very last. They still aren’t happy with
some of the results with it and I understand that but I think it improved the process and I think it’s wonderful if everybody would do that but I don’t think it’s fair to make every
neighborhood fight individually with every developer. It’s very inefficient. That’s why I wanted the city to have a public workshop procedure so when a major developer like the Margraves
Ranch or Tower Point or whatever, the neighborhoods around it would have a say at the very beginning if they chose to. Those neighborhoods to the south are pretty well organized in
that they have HOA’s, but the other problem that came up frequently while I was on the Council was the Aggie Shack problem. And that involved neighborhoods on the south side and the
east side in particular that were being taken over to offer student housing rental by the room in single family neighborhoods. These older neighborhoods that had been created and zoned
for single families, the roads were created for that, the lots, the size of the housing, everything. They had been created before HOA’s began to be used as a means of protecting neighborhoods
from commercial development. The people supporting the development of these, were able to build these basically apartment buildings and rent them by the room because the city decided
they could not have a working definition of family would not occupy these buildings.
And they couldn’t tell someone they couldn’t build it in a single family neighborhood because when the plan came in it was for a structure with four bedrooms and four baths through everyone
knew what it was going to be but no one could say a family couldn’t live there you understand. I then submitted a proposal and, let’s look at the usage and I’ve given you a copy of
that zoning proposal and it was essentially saying that if you’re going to rent by the room, you have to live
there. You could rent two or three rooms in your house if you were a single person and you were taking care of it. And it would discourage this commercialization of housing in these
neighborhoods because parking was a huge issue. We are concreting the back yards as well as the front yards on many of those lots.
The streets would not hold the big trucks that were being parked on them, they were removing parking because of fire issues. It was just becoming a huge headache and it was a quality
of life issue which was what it became and it was frequently said,“Well you are anti-student.” And so I would say, No we aren’t anti-student we are anti the destruction of the quality
of life in those neighborhoods.” And I felt that this would work. My proposal also said if you wanted to rent your home you could rent it but to no more than two unrelated. Now again
that was questionable in the eyes of some of the legal authorities as to whether that would hold up in court. But we do have some of those requirements in some of the HOA neighborhoods.
So it seemed to me that it would hold up and it should be tried. However the biggest issue was economically people did not want to do it and the political will did not stand up as some
people on the Council have said they did not want to be telling neighborhoods what they could and couldn’t do. My argument was that’s what was done when we created the neighborhoods
and the zoning but we just weren’t enforcing it and I felt that we should go back and enforce it And then we would preserve more affordable single family housing. Many times builders
were concerned about having affordable housing. I thought my proposal would provide more affordable housing because many of the families that might live there were not going to live
there in these Aggie Shack “homes.” And of course there were elementary schools built in those areas that weren’t being utilized, there were a lot of ramifications. But the bottom line
came down to the political will to enforce the zoning for single family neighborhoods and some people saw that as a total infringement on property rights. They argued if you own the
property that you should be able to do what you want to with it. I don’t feel that way because once we adopted zoning in this city, everybody knew the rules we were playing by which
says what you can and cannot do with your property because the idea is to protect other people’s property not just allow you to get as much as you can out of yours. Zoning was adopted
to protect the whole neighborhood. So there are differences, very strong differences of opinion. I have not had the political support while I was on the Council to get my proposal brought
up for a vote. Staff did include the one part in the overlay when they were redoing the neighborhood overlay as having the choice of limiting the number they were going to rent to if
you adopted the overlay. But again each neighborhood would have to adopt that on their own. And that’s the problem in the older neighborhoods that don’t have HOA’s, much of the property
is already rental and it’s difficult to do it from an owner standpoint.
1:04:39: TG: That’s a lot.
1:04:40: BB: It’s a very, very complicated issue.
1:04:45: TG: Yeah, the Aggie Shacks, the zoning, the fees.
1:04:49: BB: But they all come together.
1:04:50: TG: They do. So the issue with the Aggie Shacks kind of consume your last term?
1:04:57: BB: Pretty, the issue with impact fees. The Aggie Shacks, and the zoning issue and impact fees were major issues during my last term.
1:05:07: TG: In the document that you sent me, just to clarify on record your years on term was from 2011-2017?
1:05:16: BB: Yes.
1:05:17: TG: And we have spoken about the major issues; growth and how to pay for it, the evolution of the transportation committee and how it came about. Um and also the impact fees
and transportation fees.
1:05:31: BB: Well now the transportation fee, I should clarify, that’s separate from the impact fees.
1:05:34: TG: Okay.
1:05:35: BB: We adopted that as a Council to pay for the upkeep on existing streets. Impact fees were adopted to pay for streets that were impacted by new development. So transportation
fee is on your utility bill and was adopted to provide more funds to keep the streets up where they existed like on Francis Street there is a lot of work going on now. Things like that
needed to be kept up but that’s the problem with growth. Growth was sucking all the money from the areas that were impacted by the growth little or no upkeep. You see that’s another
way they come together.
1:06:24: TG: Absolutely. [Pause] in your bullet you also have the architectural advisory committee.
1:06:30: BB: Yes.
1:06:30: TG: Can we talk about that? What do you mean by that?
1:06:32: BB: That is a committee that I’m very proud was established. In the process of the discussion on the police station, I was very aware that we needed more input from the Council
prior to approving a large sum of money for the design of public buildings. When I came on the Council they had just built fire station 6. I was not a fan of fire station 6 but I was
told in the first meeting I attended that nothing in the plans could be changed “because the design had gone out and $2 million invested.” I said, “We need to find a way to get involved
earlier in the process.” But I had just come on the Council so I kept looking for that way and then in the discussion with of the police location, and the city hall, I wanted to find
a way to get Council and citizens involved in this in a way they weren’t being involved. I understand staff is out there doing their job trying to move projects along. But one of the
reasons city hall got turned down the first time was because it moved along but it didn’t have the support of the citizens. So I felt we needed to get more involvement with Council
too because as I said if the design money was spent then you’re stuck having spent a lot of money. So I recommended that they establish an architectural advisory committee. And James
Benham supported me and he stayed on the Council a year after I went off and he served on the committee. I never served on it because it was established just as I was going off the
Council.
My husband actually serves on it because he was elected to serve in my former position. But the idea was to have three Council members and two or three members of the community to give
some feedback on plans such as, “we like this kind of design more than that or do we like this location more than that location.” So that the Council at least had some input other than
simply, take it or leave it. When I started asking about the police station this is no secret, I was in favor of a new police station either expanding where it was across King Cole
Street into that vacant lot and using the building they already had or going to the corner of Krenek Tap and Dartmouth on the east side. I wanted that side to stay attached to the park
and to be used for other citizen uses. And it was always discussed very quickly in workshops but I never thought it got a full public hearing and that’s when I said we’ve got to bring
it out in the regular Council meeting and vote on it. That’s why I wanted that committee established. So there would be more input and we would also be bringing more things out for
a vote and not just by asking for consensus mostly in workshops. And I felt that, again this is another one of those issues that I will say for the record that I was very much opposed
to where they located the police station and to the size actually. I felt it could have been done on the other side. There were arguments from them, the staff, saying flood plains and
houses which were not available for sale on Krenek Tap between the municipal building made this location not as desirable.
Eventually I thought these houses would come up for sale. But at any rate, I was opposed to the location but I was not opposed to having a police station. So when it came down to that
or nothing, yes I voted for it. But I argued as strongly as I could against where it was being located and that involved size and everything else about it. But I lost that argument,
I mean you do your best. You put out what you think is the most reasonable argument given what you know and have heard and others put in their views and then you vote. I have always
said this, “that at the end of the day even when I lost, which was frequently, at the end of the day I was glad it was done by majority rule and I was glad it could be done in a civil
way.” That doesn’t mean everyone on the Council left happy after every meeting but overall there was civility and the process was preserved. But I tried to look for ways to improve
the process. One was the public workshop recommendation, and another one was this architectural advisory committee to have more input from citizens and Council members with the staff
earlier on.
1:11:35: TG: Thank you. [Pause]. To move forward, you also discuss in your note issues that did not get passed. Did you want to go ahead and discuss that in your tenue?
1:11:48: BB: Sure. Issues that did not get passed. I supported the idea of regulating e-cigarettes, this came up in my first term. Mostly the discussion opposing this regulation was
we don’t know enough about it and we need to wait and get more information on it. I felt that we should regulate it to the extent that we already regulated smoking in public places,
that’s what I was asking for. But I didn’t get enough votes on that. I did have some support but I didn’t get enough. Public workshops I’ve already talked about why I recommended it.
This is not for every development but for major new developments and the zoning proposal for single family neighborhoods I’ve talked about. And I was always concerned with street width
and possibly block lengths because as it is when we build these developments we have to go in and remove parking immediately for fire regulations. And I felt that was a quality of life
issue, that if people can’t have a home where
people can come and visit them and park in front it just cuts down on the quality of life of people living in these neighborhoods and it isolates them more. And it’s all done so that
more money can be mad in each development. And you can argue yes, well yes more houses can be built which provides affordable housing and keeps it cheaper. There are arguments on both
sides. I felt that there might be room to widen it just enough to accommodate parking and still have room for emergency equipment to get through.
1:13:33: TG: That’s such a, I mean I’m not a homeowner.
1:13:36: BB: Uh huh.
1:13:36: TG: So I don’t know much of the um, logistics when it comes to purchasing a home except growing up at my parents’ home.
1:13:42: BB: Mhm.
1:13:42: TG: But this is so bizarre to me. These conversations of why reducing someone’s uh, street, sidewalk, and block length is an issue. Like it’s not. [Laughing]
1:13:55: BB: Right. It impacts more than just the concrete.
1:13:59: TG: [Laughing]
1:14:00: BB: And I think that’s why I began by answering your question of, “what had prepared you” the way I did. I had not prepared by studying in depth how much do sewers cost? How
much does concrete cost? I had to do that on the Council. What’s the best way? Asphalt, concrete, whatever. I had to do that kind of study on the Council. And it requires something
to make an intelligent vote on it. Or listen to people who are intelligent on it and you do a lot of that. You try to find out who you can respect to give you good information on both
sides. But I had prepared by trying to understand what kind of country we want and what kind of city we want. And what kind of impact our laws have on our families, on our citizens,
on how we live together and support each other. And how we control crime. I mean what do you do? Burden neighborhoods with too much traffic, too much development? All of these increase
crime in neighborhoods. Where neighbors know each other and get together there is less crime. That’s why people want to live in those neighborhoods. And it does have an economic impact
too but it’s not one you can immediately put down with a pencil and take it to the bank. The other does. If I make the street this wide and if I don’t put a block cut in here, I can
make x amount more houses on it you see. That’s easier to tabulate. It’s harder to tabulate the impact on the quality of life. But we all see it and feel it, I think. And all of these
have an impact on how we go about helping to control, crime and how we support each other in neighborhoods.
1:16:04: TG: Absolutely. Can you discuss your last bullet? Limit rezoning all for commercial/general.
1:16:10: BB: Yes. Oh yes. There was a big push while I was on the Council to rezone all land that had been zoned suburban/commercial and to make it general/commercial. This will be looked
at again in the comprehensive review. But the argument was that they could not attract
businesses to attract the kind of of businesses they wanted in order to get the property on the tax role, they needed to have suburban/commercial areas changed (rezoned) to general/commercial.
Well, I argued that some of that is okay, maybe, but some of it we know backs right into a neighborhood and, for that reason, I felt that it should be kept suburban/commercial. A good
example of some of that is out where I live in the Foxfire neighborhood near Sebesta Road. When the Hwy 6 frontage property was rezoned we were told that there was going to be one small
boutique automobile dealer going in and then some very small shops, maybe coffee shops, a restaurant, things that the neighborhood would want but that it had to be rezoned commercial.
And we were also reminded of other places that had been rezoned commercial had not been detrimental and I agree this has been the case in some areas. The one where Luigi’s is, that
one. It backs up essentially to Wood Creek. Though it hadn’t enhanced the property it backs up to directly but it wasn’t that offensive you know to it. But what has gone in at Sebesta
Road and the Frontage Road on Hwy 6, once it was rezoned general/commercial we now have three massive automobile dealers here. Once a property is rezoned there is no control over it.
You can build whatever. I’m not going to say that the developers of this property knew they were going to do build three auto sales establishments there, but the point is even where
you have established neighborhoods nearby, commercial development may encroach upon residential areas and degrade the quality of life there. We have suburban/commercial areas in which
doctor’s and dentist’s offices and other small business can locate with little or no negative impact on nearby residential areas.
1:19:01: TG: I’m not familiar.
1:19:03: BB: At the entrance to Emerald Forest there is an orthodontist office there, a law firm and several professional type buildings. Those are good to go next to neighborhoods because
their likely traffic will have a small impact on neighborhoods. [Pause] When you build something like those big automobile dealers or Wal-Mart large commercial business with high traffic
volumes, this is a different matter. That was part of the issue with the Wal-Mart moving out there on Rock Prairie, traffic impacting the neighborhood just to the north of it.
1:19:45: TG: Absolutely.
1:19:48: BB: But it’s very difficult because I don’t ever want to say we shouldn’t grow. Everybody appreciates growing and getting more opportunities and services. I wish Pappadeux’s
who bought land would actually come build on it but they haven’t. I mean there are things a lot of us would like to see here that haven’t happened. But not all growth enhances the quality
of the land or of the community. And I think that is the harder trick to look at what is really good for the overall community economically, and qualitatively. What makes it a place
where people want to live? And I think College Station as a city has had a very good record of caring about quality of life issues. Through support of parks, through support of neighborhoods,
through all of these things. Part of it was because we weren’t growing that fast. But once A&M decided they would grow by 10,000 a minute [laughs] or whatever, then obviously the spill
over was going to hit very hard. And it hit very hard during my years on the Council,
1:21:07: TG: Absolutely. So you brought up Texas A&M University. I do have a question. During your tenure in office can you describe the relationship between the City of College Station,
the community, and the university itself? Was there, did the city have a relationship with the university?
1:21:24: BB: Yes, I think it had a good relationship. We had differences obviously. But for instance, the City’s transportation committee, we always had Peter. The director of their
bus system would always come to our meetings so we could discuss issues and concerns that we had. And Tim Lomax would come and we would have a dialogue and talk about issues and discuss
them. And we could hear their reasons and they could hear ours. I think at the city manager level it wasn’t always perfect and at the mayor’s level but I think that Nancy Berry developed
a good relationship with A&M. There was a period of substantial tension when A&M decided to expand Kyle Field and they were looking for hot tax money, which made sense for the city
to contribute to that project. I think it was going to be about $36 million. But in order for the city to commit to that funding, the mayor and others on the Council negotiated an agreement
with A&M agreed to give us preferred use of facilities, in exchange for this hot tax money. That deal made sense, A&M is what brings people into the community and the hot tax money
is to be spent on things that attract people and put heads in beds in the community. But the problem is I don’t think it has worked out as well as it could. I don’t have the figures
on how often this is utilized. You would have to get them from what is now the Experience Bryan/College Station or from A&M. But how often are they able to do it is a problem because
generally all of the facilities are booked for A&M activities, the ones that they want to use at the time they want to use them. So I’m not sure but it gave some coverage to the city,
it’s better than nothing, and certainly it has worked somewhat. So I think there were good relations and our Council always met with the president of A&M and would have a meeting at
least once usually twice a year and would bring the Council as well as County officials and Bryan officials and brought all of us to date on A&M and what was going on and I thought
that was very helpful. I can’t speak to how much this is happening now but this was while I was on the Council.
1:24:41: TG: Absolutely.
1:24:43: BB: It’s just hard though to have a perfect relationship when you have a large entity and the city. You see the interesting thing, about College Station is that most university
cities have a town gown issue. In other words there has always been a little tension between the big business people and the university, the gown people who are in the ivory tower.
But College Station didn’t have that issue because the business was the gown. A&M was the business of College Station. Everyone worked there and people literally moved off the A&M campus
and created the City of College Station, that’s how it came about. And later it ultimately incorporated into its own city. But the issue wasn’t the same as in most cities and there
wasn’t this tension between the town and the gown because we were all a part of that sort of enterprise that business. And as A&M has grown and more business has been spawned in regard
to that, A&M’s growth itself is creating more tension in the neighborhoods and for the quality of life. And it’s a very complicated issue because people in College Station support A&M,
most of us have degrees from A&M, or have taught at A&M, you know or married someone from A&M [laugh].
1:26:33: TG: Yeah.
1:26:34: BB: It’s a very complicated issue. It’s not like here’s a factory out here let’s put a university here so they’re not going to get along. Here is A&M and that created the town.
Okay.
1:26:48: TG: It’s interwoven.
1:26:49: BB: Yes.
1:26:51: TG: Um, so along with your responsibilities on the Council, did you participate in other service opportunities maybe not directly related to the Council? Not committees but
other organizations?
1:27:03: BB: Well, I was teaching full time at Blinn College when I was on the Council. Other committees not related to the Council you were talking about?
1:27:11 TG: Maybe more personal?
1:27:12 BB: Well, I am a member of A&M Methodist church. I teach Sunday school there, participate there. I was for a while on the board of the Brazos Symphony and still support them.
[pause]. I’m a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) but I’m not active in it. Trying to think, I don’t think so. I mean on the Council I did participate in other
committees, not just transportation. I was on the intergovernmental Council committee. I went to those meetings once a month and that met with county and City of Bryan officials. And
I was on the public health committee, the department of health for the county. We met with the county in Bryan. I was the chair on the bike pedestrian committee, on the Council. But
outside I’m trying to think. I was involved in Blinn and in teaching full time.
1:28:29: TG: That’s a lot. That’s a huge responsibility. Two huge responsibilities. We are almost coming to a close on your interview. So I have about five more questions but they are
all related. Um before wrapping up to closing the interview. How was your relationship with your constituents? Did you meet with them often? Did they come talk to you?
1:28:50: BB: Yes [laughing]. Very often, especially those in neighborhood groups because they didn’t know who to talk to. Again this goes back to my interest in trying to get a process
set up. If you’re going to develop a development you know where to go in the planning and development of the city. You know who to talk to, to start the process. There is someone to
kind of guide you through it. Now, the city does have a neighborhood person, Barbara Thomas and she does a good job of trying to send out information to the neighborhoods. But as far
as directing their political interest they don’t really have an ombudsman in the city. That’s what the Council people have to do if they are going to represent everyone. And obviously
neighborhood groups were more comfortable talking to some members on the Council than talking to others though they tried to talk to everybody. And just like business people they were
more comfortable meeting with people who shared their interests. I met many times with different business people who were doing developments and I appreciated their giving me their
perspective on what they were going to get done and how they were going to do it, and listening to what I had to say. But
the general neighborhood citizen advocate wasn’t going to get that kind of meeting with them. Unless they raised a big issue.
1:30:25: TG: I can understand, absolutely. Do you have any advice for those interested in public service?
1:30:31: BB: Well let me go back and say out of those meetings with citizens, a group of citizens in the city actually formed the College Station Association of Neighborhoods. And that
really was formed during my last year on the Council. And it really played a role in the 2018 election. They began to endorse candidates. And that, as I believe, had made a potential
impact, a very different sort of impact. They are still working to perfect how they go about doing that. Because you don’t want it to be adversarial, neighborhoods against business.
You’ve got to listen to both sides if you are on the Council and if you are in one of these interest groups. I’m sure if you are in business you need to listen to the neighborhoods
and if you are in the neighborhoods you need to listen to business but you need a mechanism for doing it. And I felt the mechanism was not as good as it could have been. Just saying,
okay you can come when we put out signs saying there will be a public notice of a hearing. You can come to P&Z and P&Z could say, “well we can’t do anything because it’s already x,
y, and z.” Or then you can come to Council a week or two later when it goes to Council and Council will say, “It’s already gone this far you should have told us earlier.” And that happened
too often in my view. So that neighborhood group was formed in response to the frustrations a lot of people felt. And as I said I didn’t win as many votes because usually the vote would
maybe go 5-2 or something like that.
1:32:15: TG: Wow. That’s an important group that coalesced together.
1:32:20: BB: Yes. Yes, it’s a very important group. They worked very hard and you might want to do an interview with some of them. Rich Woodward is the head of that group now. I can
give him your name to get in touch with or I can send you his, its R Woodward, I think at Gmail.
1:32:41: TG: Yeah if you.
1:32:42: BB: [Interrupts] let me just look it up right now. But I can also tell him.
1:33:03: TG: To go back to the question, I’m actually going to side track. I have one question before the one I asked you previously. What are the difficulties and rewards of public
service?
1:33:13: BB: The difficulties.
1:33:14: TG: And rewards.
1:33:14: BB: And rewards. The difficulties are that you don’t get everything done that you feel should be done. And that you have to learn to be civil [laugh] and operate in a civil
manner when you really want to get pretty angry because someone keeps coming back with an argument that you thought you had refuted [laughs] two or three times. But people have different
opinions and you have to work with that. As I said overall my basic mantra was, “democracy was not winner take all.” It’s a way of living together, I think John Dewey said it best,
“it’s a mode of associated living.” It’s a way for us to get together and work out our problems and I think that’s frustrating at times. It’s time consuming because you have to meet
with two or three groups on the same
issue, maybe and say the same thing and still may not get what you want out of it. But that’s part of the process and those are the difficulties. And the time involved, it involves a
lot of reading, as I said just learning the issues that are coming forward so you can make an intelligent comment and vote for one block length as opposed to another. Or one kind of
street coverage as opposed to another, you know those kinds of things.
They are not things you have just read about your whole life. The rewards I think are amazing. You meet wonderful people, I loved the part of the Council meetings when it was Hear Visitors.
People would show up and say, “this is what I think you’re doing wrong and you ought to do it better.” And you just hear these people who walk in off the street and tell you, “yeah
that makes a lot of sense, they got it right.” Or you see the amount of time neighborhood people put in to trying to salvage their quality of life in their neighborhoods. And it reaffirms
your faith in the democratic process. That not any one person has all the right answers. That it’s better if we all come together in a good atmosphere and do the best we can. And that
applies for the neighborhood side, it applies for the development side, it applies for politicians, it applies for everybody, coming together in goodwill that’s what has made the country
great. Is that somehow that process has been preserved. I gave my life to teaching history and trying to impress on students how important it was not to just memorize dates and facts,
but to appreciate what it had taken for this kind of effective democratic lifestyle, if you want to put it that way, to come together.
And I always said when I was teaching, we talked about the problems of immigration, especially in the 19th century a lot of problems and there were bad things that people did to other
groups. But no matter what we say no place on earth has ever given as many opportunities to as many people as this country has. And we have to remember that even though there were a
number of things that had to be corrected, slavery and other things, they were corrected and whether they will be perfectly accepted or work perfectly, the racial tensions we know we
still have. But the idea is that we still have a mechanism to keep working on issues and keep honoring our past, learning from it, and applying it and not just throwing out everything,
and thinking we have to start completely over because we are all a bunch of racist pigs. We can’t have that anymore. And I think the same applied to women’s groups, there were times
in our past where women didn’t have certain rights. There were also times, that what good did it do for a woman to have the right to own property if she couldn’t cut down the trees
on it and build a log cabin on it, and protect it. And she needed protection provided by men and her family. So it made sense that certain laws existed at a time that had to be changed
as technology, as industry, as lifestyles, as everything changed.
1:38: 25: TG: [Interrupts] so one of the last questions I have is, What you have done after leaving office?
1:38:30: BB: Probably not as much as I should because I retired at the same time so it seemed a great relief from everything. But I have been working very hard to get a history of College
Station book updated. We weren’t able to get that done while I was on Council, so I’m still working on that. I’m also working on updating a history of our church, A&M Methodist, for
its hundredth year recognition. But one of the things I’ve really enjoyed is that I’ve been able to
read everything that I’ve wanted to read [laugh]. I didn’t have to grade papers for hours at night and I didn’t have to worry about the same subject, presenting it so a class would get
it. I never got tired of teaching it but I’m saying is I’ve been able to broaden and read things I didn’t have the time to read. And try to look at those types of issues a great deal
more. I like to write and I write articles for The Eagle on occasion. But I also broke my foot in December so that has pretty much limited my ability to walk but that’s given me more
time to read and as I said I teach Sunday School and I continue doing that. And my husband is still on the Council, so I have to keep up with Council issues. So basically that’s what
I have been doing but I also have enjoyed picking up my grandchildren when they need a ride, they are not driving yet but they will start driving next year so they will be gone and
I won’t be able to be with them as much because they will have their own wheels I’m sure.
1:40:18: TG: [Laughs].
1:40:19: BB: Or they will ride somebody else that does. But now they need me to do the driving. S that’s been fun to have this little span of time to spend with them.
1:40:29: TG: That’s beautiful.
1:40:30: BB: Yeah, as I said I don’t do as much as I should but the day just goes like that. I try.
1:40:40: TG: Absolutely. So my last question before we end, what advice would you have for someone who wants to run for public office or be a public servant?
1:40:50: BB: I would say that you need to be sure that you want to do this, not to gain financially from it, or not to gain any sort of great acclaim, but to serve. If you want to do
it to serve and to give back to the community you are living in then it’s a wonderful way to do it. You get to meet more people, you get to participate in more discussions. And even
when I ran for office and lost in the state representative race, I always looked at it as a learning process, of course I’m a teacher so I would. I looked at it as a chance to learn.
And so it’s a wonderful dialogue you are able to have with people you wouldn’t ordinarily be talking to. You might or might not visit with some of these people, but this structures
it so that you have to try to solve certain issues and bring those forward and it gives you an opportunity to do that.
1:42:00: TG: Well, thank you. Do you have anything left that you want to say on record?
1:42:05: Ah, I don’t think so. Thanks for this, I don’t know if it will do a lot of good in the long run. I don’t expect a lot of people to sit there glued to it. But I hope it least
preserves some of the issues and the reasons why I thought they were important.
1:42:23: Absolutely. Well, thank you for your time, contribution and dedication, to the City of College Station.
1:42:28: BB: Thank you.
1:42:28: TG: We really appreciate it.
1:42:29: BB: I’m glad you are doing these interviews.
1:42:30: TG: And that concludes the interview.