My Platform
Hutto is a rapidly-growing small city that must take steps now to preserve its small-town charm, maintain its stellar safety record, and ensure current and future residents and businesses are proud to call Hutto home.
Planning
Broaden the Planning Focus
Hutto needs to plan not just for the next fiscal or calendar year, but for at least five years beyond. This planning needs to include infrastructure, residential development, commercial development, and improvement/upkeep of existing city assets. Water and wastewater and drainage projects must be initiated to keep up with projected growth. Developments must be planned with an eye towards impacts and effects on existing and projected infrastructure. Land for roads and sidewalks must be reserved to prevent Eminent Domain claims and loss of people’s homes or property. Hutto’s growth isn’t stopping, and we cannot put the needs of the community on the back-burner to pursue other agendas.
City Budget
City Staff is a Key Component
The layoffs of 2020 were catastrophic to those affected, and caused needless turmoil in the city. The budget is lean, but I believe that failure to give the workers – building inspectors, wastewater workers, patrol officers, and others – compensation that is competitive with surrounding areas can cause just as much turmoil for the city. If the utility billing clerks can make $15,000 a year more for the same job in Taylor, Hutto will be hard-pressed to keep them from leaving. If a patrol officer’s worn-out radio battery constantly fails, it may not be available when she needs it most. If we don’t make sure we have concrete in the budget, children will continue to walk and play in the street because a sidewalk doesn’t exist. One only need look to our new City Manager to see that staff and municipal workers are a key ingredient to Hutto’s success; we cannot afford to neglect them.
Business
What the People Want
Attracting jobs and light industry to Hutto is a good idea, but the last several years haven’t seen the right type of commercial and retail growth. Tesla, Amazon, and Apple haven’t come to Hutto, yet the Economic Development Corporation is still swinging for this type of "home-run". The "base-runs" we’ve gotten over the last three years are okay, but I haven’t heard of anyone taking their kids shopping for school supplies in the Titan Industrial Park. We need the "doubles" and "triples"; a place where you can buy a bat and glove to play on the improved ballfields. A retail or grocery store that attracts people from other cities into Hutto to spend their money here. Movie theaters, sit-down steakhouses, ice cream shops, and a mid-range big-box retail (rhymes with "schmarget") would benefit the community and are wanted in the community. We need to attract them now, not later. We shouldn’t have to go to Pflugerville to buy a soccer ball, a backpack, or a new set of bedsheets.
Communication
Better Communication = More Participation
Communication between the City and the citizens has been improving – slowly – over the last few years. We have live-stream meetings and video archives that are fairly reliable. We have different ways for citizens to make their voices heard at Council and Board meetings. We’ve made improvements in the zoning notification system for residents, so neighbors are less likely to be surprised by a development going in nearby. But I think we can do more. We can restructure the City’s online presence to make it more intuitive, easier to access from both home and mobile devices, and to provide and display information in a manner that’s easier to search and retrieve. We can push harder for services for residents with reduced hearing, vision, speech, or mobility functions. We need to welcome – not exclude – new faces and fresh ideas from within the community to unify the thousands of individual stories into one Hutto.
Involvement
More Participation = Better Government
Anyone who understands municipal government and employment knows that 100% transparency isn’t possible. Federal law prevents the release of medical information. Labor laws restrict what information can be collected on employees. Negotiations are fluid and shouldn’t be released – or acted upon – until finalized. But I believe that through citizen engagement, we can get as much transparency as is legally allowed. We need to encourage and recruit talented and passionate citizens to participate in guiding and steering the city’s course, and for Council to give that guidance very serious consideration in their decisions. Any registered voter residing in the City should be “qualified” for any volunteer board or commission; that should be expanded into the ETJ in some cases. Any additional restrictions, pre-qualifications, or requirements should be eliminated immediately. More participation means more ideas, and those ideas fuel the passion and projects that will keep Hutto moving forward into the future.