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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLarry Ringer TranscriptionCity of College Station Heritage Programs Oral History Interviewee: Larry Ringer Interviewer: Unknown Place: College Station, Texas Project: Mayors Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt Interviewer (I): Then to run for mayor. 00:03: Larry Ringer (LR): Well and I was involved in a community group called College Station Rec- Recreation Council. And it was a group of volunteers in the late sixties, early seventies that, that organized programs, summer programs, summer programs for the kids in the community. We did swimming, did, we ran the swimming instructional program, used a pool at the university. We started during that program a, girls’ softball. It was of course, Little League was still was going on. We had tumbling, we had arts and crafts classes, we had all kinds of things for kids in the summer. Well that, the university came to us and said that they had gotten so large that we, they needed their pool and they needed their intermural fields during the summer, we wouldn’t be able to use them anymore. And I, I looked around and I thought, “There are no parks in this community.” There are no, there are little small neighborhood parks and stuff, but there’s no parks with ball fields or anything. And we didn’t have a city swimming. And I thought back to my home town which is a smaller town than College Station and we had those facilities. And I thought, “Why doesn’t College Station?” And so, I, I was complaining and my wife said put up or shut up, as wives sometimes do. Right, rightfully so probably. And so I ran for the city council. With the, with the, part of my plat, a major part of my platform being to, to get a city recreation program and parks program going. And I was lucky enough to be elected. I: And again and again. 01:46: LR: And again and again, yes. I: Again. And what made you then decide, having served on the city council, to then jump in and, and run for mayor. 01:57: LR: Well I, there were, as, as often happens when you get involved with a group and you make, you get one thing accomplished, there’s something else you want to get accomplished. And then there’s something else that you want to get accomplished. And, and College Station had become very much like a home to me and I wanted things, I wanted to see it continue to grow and develop and I wanted to see some control over that. And at that time Gary Halter was mayor and he had told me he would not probably run for another term after his term was finished and we were out sequence. We had two, two year terms. So I thought well, “I’ll lay out a year and then run for mayor.” And when he has, well he did run for another term and so I laid out three year. And then ran for mayor with, and with the idea that I still had something to contribute to the community. I: Talk about the campaigns. Did they evolve as, as, as you, as you, as you got better at it so to speak? 02:57: LR: No I don’t know if [chuckles]. The, the first campaign for council, of course the community was much smaller than it is now, and most campaigning was doing, walking neighborhoods door to door. We didn’t do much advertising, we didn’t do television, very little radio maybe. Didn’t spend a lot of money. When we did hand printing of signs, yard signs. My wife made up a st-stamp out of old intertube letters cut out on a wood board and inked them and we inked our, our signs ourselves and, and distributed them. Walked a lot of neighborhoods. I had support from the family. We had at that time two children, our daughter and then a younger son. And they wanted to help so they went out to neighbors they knew and they walked up to one house and I heard about this later. I said, our daughter said, “I’m Margaret Ringer and my dad is running for city council and we’d like to have you vote for him.” And my son said, “If you do, I’ll never talk to you again.” [laughs] And, and I think maybe he knew what was, what would be the impact because at you know, when you’re serving as mayor or council or a lot of organizations in this community, there are times that you have to be gone and you miss out on school plays and recitals and some things like that so. I: After the first campaign, did it get easier or did it get harder? 04:32: LR: It got harder in one sense as the community grew and you had to do more and you couldn’t walk, the neighborhoods got bigger and further apart and you couldn’t cover all of them yourself so you had to help. You end up spending more money on adver-, you advertising more. Some of them got easier because I didn’t have an opponent. And I’ve told people I’ve run with an opponent and without an opponent and within opponent is much easier. Much easier. [chuckle] I: Were the campaigns primarily about the issues or were they personality oriented? How would you characterize them? 05:12: LR: I think most of them were issue, most of them they, people were concerned about what you represented. They also looked to see I, as I think they do now some is what involvement have you had in the community and have you had any experience in the city. The one thing I’ve always liked about council races and the mayor’s races, they’re not partisan. So you’re looking at hopefully, the qualifications of the individual as to, as opposed to do they belong to a particular party or not. I: You spoke earlier about looking at the community and seeing that it needed parks and so forth. 05:54: LR: Yes. I: Will you talk a little bit more about your history of involvement with the parks and recreation department. 06:04: LR: Well I was, when I was on the council then, I was council liaison to the parks and recreation board. So I got involved with that and of course we were involved as a council. And, and I was lucky enough to have other people on the council that saw the need also. So we had that going for us and, and we were able to develop the concept of, of not only neighborhood parks, but then major recreation parks such as Central Park and, and the expansion of Little League facilities and things. I: One of the things that’s interesting about College Station is that the library system is included with the park department. Now that’s a rather interesting combination. How did that come to be? 06:55: LR: I’m not sure. [laughs] I’m not really sure except that in a sense they, they are service oriented organizations because you’re providing facilities for the citizens of the community, as opposed to ga-, water, or sewer, or garbage pick-up and so forth. It’s a, it’s a, a recreational kind of activity more or less. I, I also think the library is a great example of the corporation, the cooperation of the two cities and agreeing on that. When we looked at establishing, the time period between mayor or council member and mayor, I was chairman of a committee to work on the library for College Station. And with support of the council and the mayor and other people, we worked in agreement with Bryan that we would have a College Station branch that would operate basically as a College Station library, but it would be part of a system with Bryan. So Bryan would furnish the head librarian, the cataloguing facilities and so forth. College Station would, would pay for the facilities, the utilities to run the facility, and the books or, or, and other ac-, things that go into a library. But, and that’s, that’s an example of where the two cities have continued to cooperate over all the years. And I think it’s, shows really that the two cities can get along in spite of what you see in the paper every now and then. I: How long did it take from the point that which the committee began to work until ground was finally broken? 08:40: LR: Well the first library was a storefront library facility in a shopping center. And, so that was simply required the remodeling of the facility and changing it to, so you could have bookshelves and a checkout area and so forth. I: That’s down by where Brown Shoe’s. Yeah. 09:01: Where Brown, near where Brown Shoe is now. Yes, right in that area. The, the actual, then after I finished being mayor, I became chairman of the committee to, to look at planning the library. And that involved probably a, a three years or more because we held public hearings on to get what the community wanted, what people felt should be in the library. And then of course had to look at ener-, energy with architects and other things about the design. I: When you were the mayor, were there, was there the beginning of interest about preservation of some of the more historic buildings like old city hall and some of the (campus?) houses? 09:47: LR: Yes. The historic building started then and we had the historic building committee and then former mayor Gary Halter was chairman of that for, for some time. He may still be, I don’t know. I mean he’s active. But yes, there was an interest in, in seeing that some of those old, historic buildings were, were kept up. And I think that’s been, been a plus for the community. And that we have kept some of the historic homes and historic buildings and kept them up. I: I’d like to go back to a comment that you made earlier about the Bryan, College Station library system being the sort of the, the hallmark of what’s good about relations between College Station and Bryan and ask you to try to characterize or comment on the relationship between the two cities during the time you were on the council and then during the time you were mayor. It can’t all have been. 10:59: LR: No it wasn’t all good. I: It wasn’t all good. 11:02: LR: In fact when I joined the city council, College Station was buying utilities from the city of Bryan. Electrical, electrics, electricity and water. The, the day, the day or two after I was sworn in, I went with the mayor and the city manager to Beaumont to talk to Gulf States about buying electricity from them. So we, it be, [laughs] I got my feet wet in a hurry on, in council activity. So there was, there have been times when there have been problems between the two cities. That was one where we decided to, to purchase our electricity from a supplier other than the city of Bryan. We’ve had problems when we talked about, oh I should say that that, that, there are hangovers from that problem that continued for many years in terms of areas that should sup, be supply, who should supply electricity when an area was annexed and, and such things as that. The solid waste at that time, Bryan needed to find a new landfill or, or get their ext-extended, which would have been very difficult for them to do. College Station had landfill facilities that were available and so we formed the organization (BAVISVA?) and at that time it seemed to work fine. Of course, later, it now we’ve seen it has had some problems and that had to be resolved. So I, there were times when College Station and Bryan for example had disagreements about things so we sat down and, and hashed them out, tried to. And, it you, you have problems (with?) your family, arguments in the family sometimes you have to sit down and hash out so. But in terms of relationships, I, I got along fine. (Marvin Tate?) was mayor of Bryan and then (Aloney Stabler?). We had a lot of fun together doing activities together, cutting ribbons or, or welcoming new groups to the community and so forth. Personality wise we, we did fine. City managers got along, they met regularly. It’s just every now and then there were some things that had to be hashed out. I: What about the relationship between the city of College Station and Brazos County? 13:35: LR: I think we got along fine. I knew both the, the, I knew the, the, the judges. We didn’t have, I don’t think the opp-, we don’t have the opportunity for the arguments with them that we do with the city because we weren’t buying electricity from them at one time and then decided not to. And we, so we didn’t jave that kind of thing. But there was, there, the group, the mayors and city managers and the county judge met on a regular, fairly regular basis to talk about things that were of concerned to the group as a whole. Transportation concerns, highways, roads, things of that type. I think the three entities got along very well together and, as, I should add to that the university. There, there were times when there were disagreements as there always will be when you have different interests. But for the most part, we, we were able to hash out any differences and come up with something that everybody could agree to. I: Do you want to talk some about what you consider to be the major achievements of your career in public service? 14:56: LR: [chuckle] Well I, I, one I, I’m really proud of is the way the parks and recreation programs and, and facilities have developed in College Station and how they’ve continued to develop after I’ve left public service. I think the community has been very supportive of, of, of that and I appreciate that. The other accomplishment is of course the library. I, I’m really proud of what we’ve done with the libraries and, and the fact that we’re gonna be able to expand the current library. I think also the continuing to have what would, neighborhood friendly development has been a, a real plus. And that’s one of the things that we saw in councils that I was part of. We’re interested in keeping neighborhoods and, and, and keeping them up so. I: When you say neighborhood friendly what, what does that encompass? 16:00: LR: Well I, I’m, for, you have in a neighborhood, you may have small parks for people can gather. You have ways of transportation. Traffic can move through them without being a, having a bad impact on, on a lot of the com-, of the area. Where you have regulations that see that they’re kept up. That, that the, they don’t fall into disrepair. I: Do you mean the neighborhoods or the parks here? 16:34: LR: The, I’m talking, neighborhoods and parks basically. I: Both. 16:37: LR: Both. Yeah. I: I see. 16:38: LR: But I, you know, it, it, it’s a schools we’ve had, we’re lucky to have good school system and where they have helped us I think attract young families. I: Let’s go back to how you think city politics has changed from the time that you were running to today? Do you see significant shifts taking place? 17:11: LR: I see perhaps more partisanship in terms of, of support for candidates. There seems to be a greater divide between different groups within the community. And it’s a, that has bothered me. I, the councils that we, that I was part of, we got along together. We could disagree, but not be disagreeable. And sometimes I’m wondering if we’re losing that, not only, and that seems to be not only problem in, in councils, but maybe even a bigger problem in other government organizations. I think it’s gotten more partisan in a sense that, that candidates are being identified with particular groups that, that have, may have opposing interests and, and so choices are being made on that as opposed to how somebody may feel about the community as a whole. I: If someone came to you today and asked you for advice about whether or not he or she should run for public office, tell us, tell us what you would say this person? 18:35: LR: [laughs] I, I’d say, the first thing I might say, “Are you crazy?” I: Oh. 18:41: LR: [laughs] I: Goodness. 18:43: LR: No. I: And after that. 18:45: LR: Yeah, and after that. I, I would, I would, I would say that it’s something that you can enjoy doing, but you’ve got to realize it’s gonna be a time commitment. And I think it’s gotten to be even more of a time commitment than it used to be. That it’s gonna cut into other activities, it may cut into your family life. You’re gonna hear things about you that, that bother you. They bothered my family more than they bothered, some of the comments were made during campaign, bothered my family more than they bothered me. Because you, I just, I almost just came to expect it sometimes. But I said it, I would tell them it’s, if you’re committed to it, if you’re really willing to put up the effort and do the work, it’s a, it’s a great way to serve the community. But it’s got takes, it’s gonna take a time commitment from you to do it. I: How did your he-, did you help your family deal with hearing things about you that they were not appropriate or not true? 19:55: LR: I don’t know whether I did anything or not, my daughter once wrote a letter to the editor, (unknowenst?) to me, about it. I: Oh my. 20:03: LR: I just tried to tell them, I tried to tell them, “Don’t worry about it. It’s” you know, “people that know us, know what we do, know what I am. And people that, people that you, you’re not gonna change anybody’s mind by getting, making a big argument about it.” It’s, it goes with the territory. I: Now your daughter must have been very angry to write to the newspaper. 20:27: LR: She was. She was very angry. I: And was this about? 20:31: LR: It was, the, the implication was that I was making a lot of money because of decisions I was making on the council. I: Oh, oh, I see. Was there not an ethics ordinance at one time? 20:44: LR: Oh I, you know, I mean in, you know, I, I, served on the council with, they got no paid. So they’re not gonna make any money being on the council. [chuckle] I: I see, I see. Let’s talk for a minute now about city employees and so and, and they’re relationship with people who are on the city council and, and, and mayor. It’s often been said that they are sometimes precluded from getting to know either the city council people or the mayor. During the time that you served, did you reach out to these people who were city employees? 21:31: LR: No. Well I, you know, some of the department heads I knew and would visit with. But the city charter says that the, the council hires the, the city manager, the city attorney, the city secretary, the municipal judge, and now they’ve added, since my time they’ve added an auditor. And that the city manager, (word?) responsible for running the city. So in, in the view of that, with the charge the council is is that they can set policy, they can set direction, and it’s up to the city manager to see that those things are carried out. So in terms of staff relations, relationships with the staff, council should not be going to staff and giving them directions. That was the philosophy I had and that, that’s what our councils had at the time. Staff, I talked to staff. I talked mostly it would be to department heads, (and that?), not, not the, not the person out digging the ditch for the water lines things. But, and I think they felt comfortable in talking to me, but if it was a problem of something, then I suggested that they try to work it out with the city manager. I did not want, I didn’t think the council ought to be involved. Or I might go over to city manager and I say, would tell him that you know, there may be a problem with some policy that the council’s developed or not working right or policy that you’ve suggested and you may want to take another look at it. But it’s the city manager’s job to run the city. I: Talk about the relationship that the city council and the mayor has with city manager. 23:20: LR: Well as I say this, the council as should be able to give the, should be talking to the city manager, man-, and city manager should be reporting as it comes back to the council and mayor and the mayor is the spokesman for the council should say, “These are the things that we want to accomplish. Or these are items that we think should, the city should be looking at.” And the city manager should see that those are carried out. It’s basically, you know, if a board of directors would tell the chairman of the company, “This is what we want you to do” and it’s the chairman’s responsibility to get those things done. The, the board of directors shouldn’t be down there talking to department heads and tell them, “Do this, do that.” And the, the problem you can run into is that the, if you got individual council members going to department heads, you maybe tel-, they may be telling department heads conflicting things. And now you’ve put that department head in a very tough position. Because he or she can’t satisfy both of the council members at the same time. I: Let’s talk about the growth of the city. It’s been said that growth is, is critical to expanding the tax base. How much did services expand during the time that you were in public service? 24:49: LR: Service is in regards to? I: Water. 24:53: LR: Water. I: Roads, et cetera. 24:56: LR: Of course well basically as you, as you annexed, as we annexed areas or as new areas developed, we had to provide electricity and water and sewage for them. We have requirements for the developers of, of say a housing area, have to put in certain sized of streets or certain size water lines, sewer lines. And then if the city thi-, says that’s gonna be one that needs bigger because it’s gonna serve other areas on out here as they develop. Then the city does oversize participation. So they will pay for the difference between one size of water lines verses the bigger one that they really want. The you know it, as, as areas developed, we had the increase of service, we had to increase. We’ve, we’ve had to increase, they’ve had to increase fire service we’ve gotten from, when I found out when I was first here, the university furnished the fire service. You, there was a siren that would go off and the volunteers would run to the fire truck or something on campus and it would tear off and go somewhere to start fighting the fire for the city. Then we, then we started a municipal fire department with one fire station. And then shor-, shortly, then some, at some point we got into the point where ambulance service was gonna be a problem because it was, we had a private group furnishing ambulance service and they decided they weren’t gonna do it anymore and we’re gonna be stuck without any ambulance service. So that then became part of the fire department. So you’ve seen this happened of course, we’ve had to build additional fire stations and add fire fighters. We’ve had to increase the police department because of community growth. But my basic feeling is that “if we’re not growing, we’re dying” because it’s the new people coming in that are giving life to the community. I: Has there always been a dynamic tension between the neighborhoods and the developers? 27:11: LR: Oh yes. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. They, they, there always has been. If you extend a street that used to be a dead end but was designed not to be a des-, dead end, but to hook up with a, a development further down the line. Neighbors don’t, they don’t understand it, you know, “That’s street’s been a dead end for five years now why?” Of course, if, the fact that it’s ten feet wider than it would normally be doesn’t make any difference. I-i-it, all of us like to, we’re comfortable as we are. We’re comfortable if things don’t change. And suddenly you’ve got new people coming through your area, you’ve got new streets, you’ve got, you, you’ve got more traffic. We’ve had to put up a signal light somewhere and I mean it’s just, there’s always that problem. I: Do you think that College Station has been handicapped because we don’t have a distinct downtown area? 28:12: LR: No, no, I don’t think so. I: You don’t think so. 28:14: LR: I, it [chuckle] and that’s an interesting question because I once went to a, I would go, one, one of the things you get called on occasionally is to go places that, went to a elementary school and they, their, they had, their reading program had been and program for the lessons had been related to your community. And so they had talked about cities and part of the book they read had downtowns, so I asked them, “Where is downtown College Station?” Well the two choices were, now this is quite a few number, quite a number of years ago, two choices were Northgate obviously and the mall. And the mall was by probably the more popular choice for downtown College Station. So you, at that time that’s where, that was basically the only major shopping area in the community—Post Oak Mall—and that’s where everybody went so that was downtown College Station to the kids. I: Now transportation is always a, a matter of great interest to, to growing communities. Talk about transportation during your term. 29:30: LR: What we had? We had streets with cars on them. [laughs] I: [laughs] 29:36: LR: The, the, the university started, the university started, yeah, the university started their bus program while I was mayor I think, I think it was. But that basically provides transportation to and from campus and mostly student transportation, which is fine because it, you know, it does cut down the number of cars and the park problems on campus. You have the Brazos Transit which is very limited for most people because it has only specific stops, you don’t have the general bus system that a major community would have. It, it is very difficult in the community to if you don’t, I would think, if you didn’t have a car to get places because again, we don’t have a downtown so you don’t have, if you’re gonna go someplace that has a lot of, of commercial establishments, it’s not an easy trip for most people. It’s, it’s, it’s a commute. Bike paths, we, we just, we started a few bike paths, but we did not have a very extensive bike path and walking. And we had started sidewalks that was something that had not been required of developers in, in the early times. So that was (my may time?) while I was mayor that we started really requiring sidewalks. So transportation or ability to get out to the community was kind of limited. I: Let’s talk about the overall achievements that you’ve had. I mean you’ve spent a, your life, your life has been given to, to public service. How would you characterize your major achievements? 31:33: LR: My, well one of them would be the parks and recreation depa-, program in College Station. And, and again let me start by, I’ll just preface all this by it’s not my achievements. It, it happened maybe while I was there, but it, it took a number of people to get done. Not only other council members but also people in the community willing to support bond issues, bond elections for, for development and so forth. So it’s not my accomplishment, it’s really the community’s accomplishments. The, I think the parks and recreation program, the library, I think programs that, that have improved the ea-ease to getting about the community. Preservation, historic preservation program. Bike paths and walking paths have added to the community. So I, I think we’ve added a lot of amenities to the community that have made it, College Station, the great place to, to live. I: I wanted to share, I understand what you mean by things that made it easier to get about the community. 32:47: LR: Well improvement of streets, the widening of some streets. The, the, bi-bike paths again, bike lanes and then the and some, some of the sidewalks on the areas. What we don’t have of course is a, is a good transportation system to help people that don’t have, don’t have vehicles. I: Were there things that you, that you wanted to get accomplished, but you just simply didn’t have time or there wasn’t money enough available? 33:24: LR: Well I’m sure there, I’m sure there must be but [laughs] you know, I don’t remember, couldn’t, I couldn’t name any specific thing. I: What did you enjoy most about being mayor? 33:38: LR: What did I enjoy most? I think it was working with, with groups that had a, an interest in the community. Working with council members, working with organizations that had an interest in the community and wanted to see it develop. I: How about what did you enjoy least? 33:55: LR: Least. I: You knew I was going to say. 33:57: LR: Yeah I knew you was gonna say, it’s just like being asked what I, what I like, enjoyed most and lea-, least about teaching at the university. And the least was easy, it was grading papers. What did I enjoy least? I [chuckle] aft, at, after, in, in about the ninth, tenth about the tenth of the year my term as mayor it was the meetings. I: The meetings? 34:19: LR: The meetings. I just got tired of going to meetings. What people don’t realize is that as mayor you’re not just meeting at the council meetings, but you are also on a number of da-, other boards and, or, and organizations. And there were weeks when I was out every night. Yeah. The, the other thing that probably I enjoyed least was when you had two groups that had strongly, differing opinions and you could see both times and you had to make a choice. I: How did you do that? 34:58: LR: I tried to decide what I thought was best for the community. And sometimes it was against what good friends wanted. I: Did you find it at all difficult to make a transition from what was a very public life back to a much, a quieter existence? 35:23: LR: No, I really didn’t. [chuckle] I really didn’t. As I said that, the last, in, in, toward the end of the last year, I was, I was getting tired of the meetings. And so I it, it was a chance to back, drop out of, of council. And I was still was on another, a number of other community organizations, their boards for those. So it wasn’t as if I had nowhere to go, suddenly it just, didn’t have as many place, meetings to go to. I: Tell us about some of your, your current projects right now. 35:59: LR: Well probably my, my biggest interest right now is related to the library. And I’m on the Friends of the Library board, I’m on the advisory, I’m ch-ch- in fact president or chairman of the advisory board for the sys, library, Bryan, College Station library system. I’m the vice chair of the board of directors for the regional library system, Central Texas Library System. And so that’s probably my biggest activity right now. I’m also very active in, in church group and in the civic club there, (Kiwanis’ club?). I: Have you loved books all your life? 36:42: LR: I have loved books all my life. I, as a young child, there was a library at the, at small, I grew up in a small town in Iowa with a small liberal arts college. And the on the campus was the Carnegie library. It’s one of the few places where there’s a, a Carnegie library was a joint community and college library. And I can remember going Saturdays up there and going to the shelves and pulling books off the shelves to read. I looked forward to a particular babysitter that we had because she read me (Tarzan?) books. And so I’ve, I’ve loved reading since a little, I was a little child. I: Now are there any questions that you wish that I had asked you? 37:36: LR: I’m sure there must be but I don’t think of them. [laughs] I: Thank you so much. 37:42: LR: Okay. I was glad to be here I: For taking the time to do this. We appreciate it so much and we’re so grateful because now you’re going to be part of our video library for the Project HOLD our own Historic Online Library Database. 38:00: LR: Thank you. Well I’m glad to be here, I, I think this is a great project. I: Oh great, thank you so much Mayor Ringer, we’re so glad to have you do this. 38:08: LR: Thank you Susan.