Traffic Lights, Turn Lanes, and School Boards: Democracy in Action

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Louie Minor (00:02):
Welcome to the Louie Minor Show.
I'm your host, bell CountyCommissioner, Louie Minor.
Today is April 13th 2025.
Welcome.
There is no Commissioner'sCourt meeting on Monday.
It's not the first or thirdMonday of the month, but there

(00:23):
are some meetings, so let's seewhat's happening.
The Bell County ElectionsCommission will be meeting on
tomorrow, the 14th, at 1.30 pmand it's established an order

(00:44):
and call the meeting to orderand establish a forum.
Consider approval of theminutes of the March 18th 2025
election commission meeting.
Then close session pursuant tosection 551.074 of the Texas
government code to discuss anddeliberate the officers and

(01:04):
employees of the governmentalbody Code to discuss and
deliberate the officers andemployees of the governmental
body relating to the appointment, employment, evaluation,
reassessment, duties, disciplineor dismissal of a public
officer, to wit, electionadministrator.
Then, item four considerevaluation for election
administrator.
Evaluation for electionadministrator.

(01:31):
So the election commissionconsists of the county judge,
the county tax assessor,collector, the county clerk and
then the chair for both theRepublican and the Democratic
party.
So those will be tomorrow forthat.
Then, on the 15th 2025, at 1o'clock, we will meet for a

(01:58):
workshop.
The Bell County Commissioner'sCourt.
Item 1 is a closed sessionpursuant to Section 551.074 of
the Texas Government Code todiscuss and deliberate about
officers, employees of thegovernmental body, relating to
the appointment, employment,evaluations, reassignments,

(02:22):
duties, discipline or dismissalof public officer, to wit,
commissioners court directreports.
My only issue with that is thatno one knows who are the direct
reports to the countycommissioners.

(02:42):
So let me see if I can rattlethem off the top of my head.
We have the tech servicesdirector, we have the facility
services director, we have thetruancy officer, we have the
county engineer, which is vacantRoad and bridge, what else?

(03:07):
What else I want to say?
There's like close to 10 ofthem, uh contracts manager.
Then we have, um, let's see, Ithink that's uh HR HR director
and the museum director for themuseum, and then I think there's

(03:32):
a couple of more in there, butI can't remember.
Just off the top of my head.
So, anyways, that's that's whatwe're going to be doing this
week.
That's what we're going to bedoing this week.
As mentioned last week, I wantedto play a segment from the
Commissioner's Court meetingwhere we were discussing
Chaparral Road.

(03:53):
I'll play that.
And then also I was able to doan interview with Lan Carter,
who's running for a clean ISDboard of trustees.
Early voting starts on the 22nd, so we will play that for you
in its entirety.
So, please, a lot ofinformation.

(04:18):
You're about to get onChaparral Road that will be on
the agenda for the 21st of Aprilfor us to vote on.
So get educated.
On Chaparral Road you can hearwhat the commissioners were
thinking and talking aboutduring the workshop so you kind
of have an idea of how thingswill go in the meeting, and then
you'll enjoy our conversation.

(04:40):
Interview with Lan Carter,candidate for Killeen ISD School
Board.
So enjoy these two segments.

Judge Blackburn (04:53):
Next item on our agenda is to discuss
Chaparral Road improvements andpotential recommendations for
engineering services.
Mr Minor, yes.

Judge.
Thank you and the court.
In December of last year FraserNichols and we have some
representatives here if you wantto come forward Fraser Nichols
performed a study for BellCounty in making some
recommendations for improvementsof traffic flow and potential

(05:24):
measures there.
Improvements of traffic flowand potential measures there.
Based off of that we put amulti-way stop there at
Chaparral, at the intersectionof Chaparral Road and
Featherline.
That's also the boundarybetween Precinct 2 and Precinct
4.
Based off of thisrecommendation there was

(05:50):
recommended to improve trafficflow, to put a traffic signal
there and to do a turn laneturning.
I guess that would be northonto Featherline.
So with that there's someengineering and everything

(06:11):
involved.
They gave estimates of how muchit should cost for the buildout
of that intersection.
This will be the first trafficsignal in the county that the

(06:32):
county owns and operates andmaintains.
So it's definitely, I think,something significant for the
county on how we operate.
But to get all that we need toget a set of plans and Fries and
Nichols, they've already beendoing a lot of work with
Chaparral Road in the city ofKilleen.
I think you're the lead for thefinal design for Chaparral Road

(06:53):
, but in the meantime we don'tknow exactly when that's going
to occur and at least at aminimum, 2029 is what we've been
told.
So, staying four years, we'reonly going to continue to grow.
Traffic's going to increase onChaparral Road.
So I want to go ahead and makethis, get this going, to get

(07:19):
this traffic light put in andthe turn lane.
I have a quote fromProfessional Services and I'll
let Colton go into it a littlebit further, but what we're
getting in kind of ananticipated timeline and I will
be seeking ratification on the21st or next meeting for this,

(07:44):
just because I want to try andget this out as fast as possible
for bid to try and professionalservices and for the actual
work to be performed for thecontract.

Colton Fisher (08:14):
So I'll turn it over to Colton Sure.
Yeah, thank you, commissionerReiner, thank you, judge and
Commissioners for listening tome.
This project has a lot ofbackground.
Go ahead and introduce yourself, just so she's got.
Oh, yes, my name is ColtonFisher.
I am a project manager withFreestone-Nichols.
Thank you, this project has alot of background and I won't

(08:35):
get too in the weeds as y'allare probably familiar with a lot
of it.
But Chaparral Road overall is alittle over six miles and the
City of Killeen, parker heightsand bell county entered an
interlocal agreement a coupleyears ago to design a schematic
level design for chaparral tobasically expand it from two
lanes to a four lane dividedroad.

(08:57):
And that schematic design iscomplete.
But the the funding to proceedto more detailed design for
individual pieces has not beenidentified to cover everything
yet.
So all of that said, ascommissioner minor said, the the
portion by the high school hereand by the middle school, that

(09:20):
that won't start at least until2029 construction-wise.
There is a chance it could evenbe longer if funding becomes an
issue later on.
So it definitely seems in thebest interest of the county to
address some of these trafficissues now.
As to what those improvementsare, or ultimately up to the
county.
We did a traffic study last yearon the Featherline intersection

(09:43):
and then the high schoolintersection.
So those two combined Trafficstudies look at intersections
and give them a letter graderating depending on what their
traffic looks like.
So A is traffic is flowingsuper smooth, f is traffic is at
a standstill for more than aminute and both of these
intersections are currently atan F right now.

(10:04):
If you go there during schoolhours and I'm sure you can
understand why traffic tends toback up past Featherline quite a
ways, which is bad for peopledropping off and picking up kids
and also for people trying togo past the school to keep going
on.
Chaparral and the middle schoolis set to open this fall, so

(10:25):
traffic's only going to getworse at these two intersections
.
So we conducted a traffic studyof the middle school's already
open.

Commissioner Bobby Whitson (10:33):
Do what the middle school's already
open.

For students it is.

Oh yeah, it's been open for a year.
Well, last year, last year,last year, that was it, that's
right.
Yeah, it's been open for thispast school year.
Okay, well, that's good to know.

So traffic is getting worse consistently as
more students come to thoseschools.
So we looked at whichimprovements would be needed to
help traffic at those twointersections and came up with a
plan at Featherline it wouldrequire an eastbound left turn
lane, a traffic signal and awestbound right turn lane, and

(11:10):
at the high school driveway itwould require a traffic signal
and an eastbound right turn lane.
So what we've talked about inthis contract involves that the
traffic signal and the eastboundleft turn lane at the feather
line intersection, which wouldcertainly help, but to
ultimately fix all of thetraffic issues at both
intersections would requirethose three turn lanes and two

(11:33):
traffic signals.

And when I spoke with Spencer, no additional
right-of-way will be required.
Correct, and no utilities willhave to be moved.
Correct, correct.

Yeah, and the goal would be to get everything
designed so that constructioncould take place during the
summer and ideally finish beforeschool starts.
We obviously have to work withthe contractor once we get to
that point to make sure it couldhappen, but that's the plan for
now.

No new right-of way, no utilities
being moved.
Is that for the ultimate buildout on the city's whole plan or
is that just for a temporaryconstruction now?

Just for this temporary solution.
Yes, there will be right of wayneeded for the ultimate section
.

And I plan to working with Matt with the road
and bridge where thisconstruction and this bid will
end.
To go ahead and redo the countyportion of Chaparral Road with
all of this will be a littleover $1.2 million that we'll be

(12:50):
putting into Chaparral Road thissummer.

Is that portion of Chaparral Road
going to be redesigned or justchip seal, just chip seal?

They'll just do level up chip seal.

I think all the Chaparral is on
schedule this year to level upand chip seal.
We do it about every threeyears anyway now because of the
traffic.

And striping as well.
So it'll be, I think, matt, howlong did you say it would take?
About a month to do all that,the portion that we've talked
about and discussed.

Just your section please.

Now, this is only going to improve that section.
I think the design wasinitially for everything to make
that improvement, and byeverything I mean right there at
that turn by the high schoolfor it to flow correctly.

(13:52):
Do you have what it would begraded at?
If we just do the Featherlinesection, what would that improve
to?

If we just did the left turn lane at
Featherline and the trafficsignal, the high school driveway
intersection would stilloperate at an F.
It wouldn't help at all withthat one.
The Featherline intersectionwould come down to about an E,
so it would help a little bit,but it certainly wouldn't
address the overlaying issuesaddress the overlying issues.

I think your study really is
almost.
I mean, from what I understood,the study that showed two
traffic signals, or that sectionsaid that without two traffic
signals nothing was really goingto get it past the needy at all
.
That needed to be an all ornothing kind of deal, because
the stacking traffic betweenthose which we were told years
ago when we were initiallylooking at all this, the
stacking traffic between thosetwo intersections, would not

(14:48):
work properly if you didn't havethose light signals tied
together.
Correct, yes.

To fully fix the two intersections.
We highly recommend doing bothsignals and all the turn lanes
included.
But you know, it's ultimatelyup to what the county thinks is
best.

But what you're proposing today is
just to approve that one side.
I don't know if that fixes ourproblem, correct?

So, just so I'm clear, the project, the
deliverables are a signal atFeatherline and chaparral and a
northbound turn lane correct.

Yeah, eastbound on chaparral to turn north on
featherland yeah, eastboundnorth and a signal at that
location.

And what's the?
The cost for the, the cost forthe engineering services?

Commissioner Bobby Whi (15:46):
$120,800 .
What's that cost based on?
Is that a percentage of yourbuild-up project?

Correct.
We worked with the county toput together a detailed scope
and fee for the traffic signaldesign and the turn lane
improvements and we broke itdown by hours for each task.
So that covers how we got theactual number and it was also
based on a percentage of theoverall cost estimate, which is
what They'll have design andthen they're going to help with

(16:26):
a bid package and then someconstruction oversight during
the construction part.

So what's the overall project cost?

It should be around $800,000.

That's for signal and the turn lane, turn
lane.
Okay.

When we started on this, we had a
price and the turn lane.
When we started on this, we hada price for the whole thing,
though.
Right, what was that price?
The design model price.

The design would be.
Let me get that number If theywere both combined it would be
about $220,000 to $230,000.
We think we could get thatnumber down if they were both
done at the same time there'ssome redundancy in tasks, but if
they were done separately, itwould be around $230,000 total
and what was the cost for thetotal project?

(17:20):
I believe it was around $1.6million For each intersection
Total For both intersectionsRight.

Were you not working with?
I know we're short of engineer,but working on the turn lane
there.

Well , we were just doing that turn
lane in-house.
We were going to do a temporaryand we can do that on our own
but didn't include the signal oranything.
It was just the right-hand turnlane to go south on Chaparral,
was just the right-hand turnlane to go south on Chaparral
and then the right-hand turnlane to go north on Featherline
within our existing right-of-waywith no signaling.
Yet the concern that I hadabout signaling was those

(17:59):
signals need to be synchronized,and so we talked about putting
temporary signals in, orrelatively temporary signals in
for five years, six years maybe,maybe end up 10 years, because
if we put both signals in andsynchronize them, then that cost
was I don't remember the numbernow, but significantly higher

(18:22):
um to buy those traffic signalsand then they would no doubt be
torn out and replaced when thefinal build-out occurred.
So we're just trying to notspend a tremendous amount of
money for a relatively temporarysolution.
But if that solution is filed,maybe realistically 10 years
from now it might need to be amore permanent solution.

(18:44):
It's just an issue of funding.
How do we pay for it?

What type of light is going to be there that you're
going to spec for?

Yeah, I'm not a traffic engineer so I can
definitely go back and get somemore of those details, but I
believe they just modeled themas individual traffic signals.
I don't think they modeled themas individual traffic signals.
I don't think they modeled themas synchronized.
So from my perspective, we werejust planning to put in like

(19:14):
they would be permanent but theywould be span wire signals, so
they wouldn't be a steel polewith an arm, it would just be
the string in between,essentially to reduce that cost,
because we do know eventuallythe ultimate section will come
in and get rid of it, so itdoesn't make sense to do the
more expensive ones.

Okay, and, commissioner, did I hear you say
this is a precinct for funds,road bridge funds, for that
would be about $920, a littleless than a million dollars, not
counting the chips that work.
Yeah, the chips that work.

Right, I think the chips that work is $275 is what
we budgeted for.
We're doing the chips that work.

Any questions.

I guess, or comments, I guess my
only comment, and I don't knowthe involvement of your project
management when we actuallybuild it out, and the bidding
and all of that.
I'm all for that because Ithink Amy's pretty well stacked
up right now.
So I'm fine with having thatdone.
But in projects we've had donebefore, the cost seems pretty

(20:34):
high, at least as a percentageof the job.
Now, project management, allthat we've not done before.
So I'd like to kind of see thatbreak down a little bit better.
But I also would like to seethis done as one project, not
split into two, because we canmake that Featherland-Chaparral
intersection really, really niceand still stack up traffic in

(20:55):
that light that people won't beable to cross if we don't have
that traffic moving out on theeast side and that signal
basically does no good at all.
By the way, there's anelementary school coming in a
couple of years down that sameroad, so I don't see the logic
in just doing one corner.

Yeah, we would highly recommend doing all of
them, for sure.

Yeah , we would highly recommend
doing all of them for sure.
Is this a fast growth area?
It's already a grown area.
It's not only a fast growtharea, it's a grown area.
There's already more peoplethan it's an old man area.
I kind of line with you,commissioner, that if we're
going to go do this thing, let'sget it, if we can get the money

(21:43):
.
The question is, where can weget money?
Is there a grant we can get oranything like that?
Well, I think the answer tothat is yes.
I think the answer to will weget that before the summer is
absolutely no.
Yeah, so doesn't mean we'regoing to hurry it.
It's something that's whatwe're here for.
It's something that we've gotnow we can piggyback the rest of

(22:03):
it on.
So, in talking to Road andBridge over the last several
months, that's why we had talkedabout putting the temporary
right turn lane in at Chaparral.
I'm calling it temporary untilwe can do the signaling and all
of that which we definitely needto vet out, not only the
process, but we'd hire acontractor to do that, because

(22:24):
our guys don't have the depth todo all of that.
They've got too many otherprojects going on already.
So to do it this summer wecould do in-house the turn lanes
and release some of thattraffic for this summer.
But over the next course of ayear or two years get K-Tempo
funding that's already kind ofin line there, knowing that

(22:46):
Colleen's not going to do thewhole job for 2029 at the
earliest.
Potentially get some thingsthat we could even do the
ultimate build out with thosefunds as just the county and
K-Tempo or federal funding andget that section done without
having Colleen be involved inthat at all, so they can still
do their 2029 schedule.
But then we wouldn't just likethe schools built out there at

(23:09):
the north end of the school.
We can build out that sectionas well with some additional
state funding.
But that's not going to happenthis summer.
So I agree we need to getsomething done this summer.
But we can put a turn lane andmatthew correct me if I'm wrong,
but I think we have thebandwidth to put the turn lanes
from east of feather line.
Widen those shoulders a littlebit, get a middle lane stuck in

(23:30):
there to go north on featherline, run that turn lane down,
um, or run that third lane downand shift them right and left as
you come to the ends betweenFeatherline and Chaparral South
to put right-hand turn lanes onthat section of road as well.
That's just us cutting becausewe're not going to get any more

(23:53):
right-of-way or anything.
That's just us cutting in somebase and chip-sealing it as well
, and do that until we can getto the point where we can put
some signals in, because thesignals are the biggest part of
this cost.
Signals cost.

How much again, signals are around $400,000 each
.
So half of this is juststicking a signal in there.
That actually sounds like areally good plan to do the turn
lanes separately, Because thesignals are not going to
interrupt traffic but the turnlanes will.
So if we can at least get theturn lanes done before school,
the signals can get put in atany time.

Commissioner Bobby Whitso (24:27):
Right , that's what I thought the
study had shown us earlier thisyear.

Yeah, yeah, and we had originally talked about
the three turn lanes and the twosignals, and I think there was
some debate about which oneshould be done or not.
So we recommend all of those.
But if we have to do it inpieces, I think that's still a
lot better than not doing it atall.

Do you have a recommendation of the
sequence of the pieces that wecan get done with the money
we're throwing around?
You know we've got some moneyto spend and what would be your
top steps to?

do in order.

Well, we have Precinct 4 money to spend and
that's what we're spending isPrecinct 4 money.
So this other section rightthere where the school, that's
Precinct 2.
So I don't know how one body'sthinking about doing the, the
turn or the traffic light, butwhere I'm getting my money from

(25:26):
is is diverting some of themaintenance on some of the roads
.
We'll be able to make those upin this year's budget because we
don't have a lot scheduled forthe silco program, so we'll be
able to.
Whatever we defer this year,we'll be able to.
Whatever we defer this year,we'll be able to pick up next
year.
So that's how I'm making thatmoney available.

Commissioner Bobby Whits (25:45):
You've got a little over $2 million in
fund balance Right yeah, butI'm not able to divert a lot of
those funds.
You might be able to in yourprecinct, but I've got a lot of
roads that need seal coding verybadly right now.
We're talking about that now.
It might even be one of theworst just because of the
increase in traffic within myprecinct Coming up by 35, and

(26:08):
all that around Salado.
Those roads are very small,very narrow.
We've got big Salama Ranchsubdivisions and big Gooseneck
subdivisions going in that I'mgoing to have to build roads.
I don't have the same availablefunds as you do going into the
next year to two years, and sothat was my concern to try to
piece this as we could to makeit keep it safe, get something

(26:31):
done this summer so that it'sbetter than it is at least.
And I want the traffic lightsup as quick as possible as well.
I just think if the trafficlight as quick as possible as
well, I just think if you putyour traffic light you can do
whatever you want in yourprecinct.
That's great.
But if you put that trafficlight up on Featherline and the
traffic just stacks up betweenFeatherline and the South
Chaparral area, then yourtraffic light can be green all

(26:53):
day long and traffic can't movethrough it anyway.
So I think it needs to haveboth traffic lights down at the
same time.
So traffic moves, traffic stops.
Traffic moves the other waytraffic stops.

Well, we can always go to the fund balance for it.

Well , that's a us decision, not a me
or you decision.

We might have two out of three votes already, but
so yeah, I guess the main thingis might have two out of three
votes already, though, but so,yeah, I guess the main thing is,
you know, getting with Amy onpurchasing and see what bid
documents.
Amy, have we done this before,I guess to bid out a road

(27:35):
project like this?

Lan Carter (27:36):
We've bid out road projects before, so there's a
lot of stuff I need to be ableto make this, but I thought
we're going to ask friezanichols to do the big process
well well, they say that they'llget the bid package together
they can't beat it.

I have to yeah, okay, yeah, she'll still have to
put it out.
They'll, they'll presenteverything, they'll give
everything to her and, uh, fromfrom what I told, we should be
able to have something ready togo within 45 days.

It's a small project so we can have it done
really quick, and I don't knowhow long county usually likes to
bid projects, but we can makethat pretty quick too, if need
be.

Commissioner Bobby Whit (28:16):
Usually , 30 days right.

I don't know.
That's pretty normal 30 daysyeah.

I think the action this workshop today, but
the action that's coming forwardis a request again from the
commissioner from Precinct 4 toengage Friesen Nichols to start
the engineering work in essenceon the project, with an
anticipation that he's alsogoing to spend Precinct 4 money

(28:47):
for that, as well as theconstruction cost for the signal
and the turn line, and to dothat regardless and again I
realize there's a debate goingon about whether or not that
helps the situation or doesn'thelp the situation.
But that's the next action itemI think that I'm hearing is
going to hit the dais is yourrequest to approve the

(29:10):
professional services agreementso that this can get launched,
correct and spend Precinct 4money on that.

The children's request is just for
the Featherline Chaparral cornercorrect, which is an
engineering cost of 130 120 800which I kind of agree with
commissioner whitson.

(29:38):
That's a pretty high percentageof the what we say.
You know the project for thatscope is $800,000, $900,000.
We were anticipating that,since you've already done that
entire corridor I know that'snot construction plans, but the

(30:04):
scope of that corridor that wekind of thought you'd have a leg
up on somebody else gettingthat done both quicker and
hopefully cheaper.
Right.
And we can always look at itagain.

We've already reduced it quite a bit.
We don't have to go out and getany surveying because we
already have that, but thetraffic signals themselves take
a bit of effort to get them allin the right spots.

Okay.
Well, kind of what I'm hearingis it will be an agenda item
next meeting that you'rebringing to it?

Well, I was going to say gratification, but I mean
, is it?

Lan Carter (30:38):
A contract needs to be put in place, a PO issued and
a notice to proceed issued aswell.

To engage the engineer yes, yeah, I would tend
to think that it's next meetingagenda item is what I would
think based on the discussionand for your benefit.

next meeting agenda item I'd like to
have figures for the wholething.
To engineer the whole thing,Engineer the whole thing.
Lights on both ends, Just thelight or the turn lanes too.

Well, I thought we were doing the turn lanes
in-house.

Well , that was my plan, but this is.
You know, this would bedifferent.
What we were going to do onturn lanes is just build a basic
county road, put our base outthere in Chippsville.
I don't know if your design iscalling for asphalt, is calling
for geotech setting up, whatyour base is going to look like,

(31:44):
if you're putting geogrid in itor you're going to line it.
I don't know any of thosedetails.
That's what I'm saying.
I would like to know what thatdetail would be, and maybe you
can't do that to obviously be aplant.
But if it's just lay another 10, you know 10, 12 feet of
asphalt next to the road andmake two turn lanes at the end,
we could do that.

Yeah, the original plan was to do a full
asphalt section.
So if the county just wanted todo base and a quick chip seal,
then that would reduce the coston our end for sure.

Commissioner Bobby Whit (32:18):
Matthew , how much design do we need for
that?
Do we need an engineer spec towiden that county road?
Really, it would be nice tohave someone come out there and
survey the market.
We've already got the surveydone.
We'll have to market where itgoes, but the survey for fence

(32:40):
row to fence row Quicksilver'sdone that and we cleared out the
bar ditches and everythingalready.
I know y'all trimmed all thetrees back, but basically I was
anticipating Whatever thecurrent road base is, which has
been fine.
We were just going to cut downand Add to that another lane On
that south side Because we'vegot room on the south end.
So the only addition to theprofessional services would be

(33:03):
for signals, signals, yeah, andI.
But that was between Featherlineand Chaparral.
I'm assuming you can continueto go down west of Featherline
to put the turn lane in at least.
Yeah.

Even if he just did his on his side, something
would have to be done over onthe precinct 2 side.

Commissioner Bobby Whits (33:26):
That's what I'm assuming.

I agree, and I guess what I'm hearing is bring
kind of two back, I mean one,that's just what Louie is
proposing, I think, and one thathas this, so that they're
separable.
Because I don't know, again, Idon't know from everybody else's
chair, but I don't, you know,I'm not sure I want to spend

(33:48):
general fund money on this.
I recognize you've gotpriorities, so that's that.
But we've got road and bridgefunds and that's what those are
for, and so if y'all gotdifferent priorities, that's
fine, but I don't know thatreally want to start dipping
into general fund to pay forstuff like this.
So I would separate those outbecause there might be a vote
that goes one way on one and theother way on the other.

(34:10):
Yeah, we can do that, okay.
Okay, thank you, sir.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you, thank you, sir.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you very much.

So I hope you enjoyed that workshop clip so
you kind of have a goodunderstanding of how we talk
things through and try to comewith solutions on how to address
issues in our community.
So, anyways, now let me pull upmy interview with Lan Carter.

(34:44):
So hope you enjoy.
Okay, so now we are here withour special guest, Lan Carter,
who is running for KilleenIndependent School District.
Trustee board of trustee forplace three.
Lan, Thank you for taking timeout of your day and coming on

(35:06):
the show.

Lan Carter (35:08):
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate that.

So I started this podcast a little bit before,
maybe a month before I tookoffice, and it was a way for me
to break through some of themedia, get my message out there
of why I'm running and what I'mdoing as a county commissioner,

(35:31):
and it's already been threeyears now I've been doing my
show, have over 60 episodes,have over 60 episodes, and
whenever we have elections, Itry to bring in people that are
running for office, people thatI want to support, and so that's
why I invited you to come on.
So if you would, I guess, tellus about Lan Carter.
Who is Lan Carter?

Lan Carter (35:53):
Okay, well, thank you for having me.
Lan Carter is a foremost mom.
I'm really proud of being a mom.
I'm a mom of three.
I am a former public schoolteacher.
I taught for eight years.
I taught kindergarten, fifthgrade in high school.
I'm a military uh, spouse.
I've been retired military for20 years.
Um, I currently work as a childtherapist.

(36:16):
Um, let's see, who else am I?
What am I?
I'm just really passionateabout education.

And so your kids went to Clean ISD, I'm assuming.

Lan Carter (36:28):
Yes, and I am actually a product of Clean ISD
too.
I graduated from Clean HighSchool.

Okay, okay.
So what I guess you know, whatI've always admired most about
you is you've always felt likeyou could make a difference and
give people a choice, and Iadmire that because I ran for
office for over a decade beforeI got elected to office.

(36:53):
I started in 2013,.
2014 election cycle, 2013, 2014election cycle.
Obviously, I didn't win becauseI ran for Congress, but I
always stayed with it becauseit's not just for me, it's about
helping people and a passion tohelp people.
So why Colleen ISD?

Lan Carter (37:16):
Well, again, because me being a public school
educator, but also because I hadissues with my own children
going to school with the kisd,and that's when I started seeing
that there was a disconnect inthe community in the education
system and clean, and I thoughtabout, okay, well, someone needs
to step up.
If you see the problems, youhave to come up with solutions.

(37:39):
And I felt passionate enough todo that because I saw there was
a lot of issues within CLEANthat needed to be improved upon,
and I think that all kidsdeserve the best education
possible that we can give them,and so that's why I keep
sticking to it, and I think thatit takes a specific board
member to do that, and I thinkthat that's me, because I'm not

(38:01):
afraid to ask the hard questionsand do the research to get the
job done.

Okay, so explain to our listeners that may or may
not know about Killeen ISD.
Can you kind of explain KilleenISD?

Lan Carter (38:17):
Well, it's one of the largest employers in this
area.
Um, let's see specificallyabout clean isd.
It's got some really goodprograms, or do you want to know
the the issues within clean isd?

well, I um, I think I remember hearing somewhere I
forgot where I heard this, butclean isd has about 44,000 kids
enrolled.
Does that sound about right toyou?

Lan Carter (38:42):
Yes, 44,000, 45,000.
Yeah, it's a big schooldistrict.

And I do know the superintendent is very well paid
, very highly paid.
In this area we have a lot340,000, I believe.
Say that again 340,000,.

Lan Carter (39:04):
I believe.

Something like that Over 300,000.
I know, yeah, that's that's uh,that's a lot of money, that's a
lot of money.
So, um, for for me as a as aCounty commissioner, I always
hear people complaining aboutproperty taxes and I mean it's
number one, without a doubt,number one thing people complain
about.
But what I have to explain tothem is that, relative you know,

(39:34):
special districts, cities andcounties are, you know, a very
small portion of your propertytax bill.
The the main culprit is yourschool board property taxes.
Can you kind of explain whythat is?

Lan Carter (39:51):
um, I'm going to be honest and tell you I don't know
a lot about the property tax.
I just know that they can't setthe rate for the property tax.
I don't know exactly what therate current rate is, or when
it's the last time they rose therate.

Yeah Well, I don't know exactly what their their
rate is either, but they are.
You know the lion's share ofproperty taxes that that people
pay and and it's and it's notjust in Killeen, it's all across
the state Property tax forschool districts are the highest

(40:25):
bill on there and that'sbecause the state is not fully
funding public education.
I think it was RepresentativeJohn Bryant down in Austin that
said here.
John Bryant down in Austin thatsaid here because and we'll get
into vouchers but he said inthe committee on vouchers that

(40:46):
you know the state wants to tout.
You know all this surplus, thisbudget surplus, is because all
these great things they're doingwith business you know
deregulating this and that theyhave that budget surplus because

(41:06):
they are underfunding publiceducation.
The last time the basicallotment had any changes to it
was in 2019.
So that's where that surpluscomes from.
It's not from anything greatthat Republicans are doing.
It's because they'reunderfunding public education.

Lan Carter (41:25):
Well, I knew that.
I knew that it had been notfully funded since 2019.
I know he held the budgethostage.
As far as funding schools,Mm-hmm.

So you know, with that said, what can you do to
address some of these issues?
What is your number one, numbertwo, number three that you want
to tackle once you get elected?

Lan Carter (41:54):
It's the budget.
The budget is extremelyimportant.
Make sure that our students aregetting our students and staff
are getting the resources thatthey need to be academically
successful.
The second priority would be,honestly, school safety, and you
can ask me the same questiontwo days from now and there's

(42:14):
just so many differentpriorities, so it's really hard
to pick down to three, but rightnow it's going to be the budget
and school safety, and threewould be that's a hard question.
School staffing, I think, isreally important.
I think that we've got I mean,right now we've got supposedly
there's a lack of schoolteachers.
Teachers are leaving theprofession, which is that's a

(42:38):
fact.
That's a fact all over thecountry.
But we need to figure out.
What can we do to keep thoseteachers within KISD?
How can we recruit the teachers?
to stay, and I think a lot of ithas to do with the environment
that they're working in.

Yeah, and so we need to improve that, as well as
the pay.
Yeah, I've definitely heard.
You know, teachers are leavingschool districts across the
state because of safety in theclassroom, because of pay, and
you know, let's face it,teachers have been under attack
by Republicans for the lastcouple of years now.

(43:14):
So, yeah, I can definitely seewhere that's an issue, that
recruitment and retention forteachers.
But I think it's more than justteachers, correct?
I mean, we have support staffand and and I don't know what,
all, what, what all staff is inschool districts.

Lan Carter (43:37):
I guess Bus drivers, nutrition workers, school
teachers, aides.
I went to a forum yesterdaywhere one of the ladies an aide
and she told me she made $12 anhour and I'm like you can't live
.
That's not a living wage.
And I asked her why she did itand she said because of the love

(43:57):
of the children.
So it's just like it's.
She was a bus monitor forspecial ed kids and she made $12
an hour and so I was like wow,that's impossible.
And she said that her grandson,grandson, who works fast food
makes more money than she does.

Yeah, definitely we can improve that.
We can improve that for sure,uh.
So let's let's talk aboutvouchers.
It appears to me that that uhvouchers will probably happen
here in Texas this legislativesession.
$1 billion they have allocatedto this voucher scam program.

(44:38):
It's going to pull money out ofpublic education and I'm you
know because I did watch a lotof the public hearings and stuff
online.
But I heard somewhere that if100 kids pull out of the school

(45:00):
district, they're going to loseteachers, they're going to lose
support staff, staff, and Ithink there's a website Don't
Defund my School and you can putin your address and it'll pull
up your school and how much yourschool is anticipated to lose.
I think Killeen ISD had $17million.

(45:22):
If vouchers is approved, thatKilleen ISD is going to lose.
That sound about right.

Lan Carter (45:30):
That's probably about right.
Yeah, I did see that um thatsame website.

And uh, so what?
What do you think um clean ISDcan do if we do have a lot of
kids leaving?
Because isn't that how schoolsare paid right now is is by
enrollment in in.
They go to school every day.

Lan Carter (45:57):
It is, it's by attendance.
Daily attendance.

So what can you do?
Because I mean you're going togo once you're elected, I mean
you're going right into budget,and so I mean you're going to
have to, and so I mean you'regonna have to educate yourself
really quick on on the budgetingand the budget process and then
, with the potential loss of,you know, hundreds of kids I'm
just curious, you know what?

(46:23):
What do you think you can do?
I mean you would have to makecuts.
Didn't, didn't clean ISD, justmake cuts.
Cuts last budget because ofthey were running into some
revenue issues.

Lan Carter (46:34):
Yeah, but they cut.
They cut positions that were onfield.

Okay.

Lan Carter (46:39):
That's how they helped um offset that.
So just, I honestly think thatthey're just going to have to,
because I I know from from whatthe current board members are
saying they don't really want tocut positions, so they're going
to be looking at cutting waste,trying to cut some waste as
much as possible, basicallylooking at programs that don't

(47:03):
work.
I know they're talking about,like for summer school, but
probably not having summerschool or because they're saying
it's not mandatory, things liketransportation it's not
mandatory, so they're going tobe looking at cutting things
that are not mandatory.
Um, I personally believe incutting waste.
I think we're too hot, topheavy, so if positions had to go

(47:24):
, I think that we had to get ridof some top heavy positions I
mean you look, we have so manyadministrators doing.
I mean we have to get rid ofsome top heavy positions.
I mean you look, we have somany administrators doing.
I mean we have administratorslike six, six, six APs, and on
top of that you've got Dean ofinstruction.
What does the instruction dooutside of the principal and the
AP in your school?
You know what I mean?
We have several coordinatorsthat we that were coordinators,

(47:46):
now they're district directorsfrom special ed and it's like
what, why did we have to createthose positions, right?
So I would be looking at thingslike that.
It's like not creating morepositions in admin, thinking
about reducing those positions,thinking about not duplicating
positions that we already have.
Um, cutting waste.

(48:07):
As far as things like programs,I wouldn't look at so much as
cutting programs, because Ithink we have kids that use
those programs, utilize thoseprograms, but I would just look
at things like how are wewasteful and try to get rid of
some of that first, before wethink about cutting staff.

Right, and this morning's paper it uh, sunday,
april 13th.
This morning's paper they theyhad uh talked about what
happened last.
Last month, colleen isd, and,for those that don't know, there
was a incident at one of themiddle schools where a student

(48:48):
was stabbed and killed on campusby another student and that's
been all over the news herelocally, and rightfully so.
A lot of parents are concerned.
There's a lot of tension in theair with parents and clean ISD

(49:12):
and one of the the paper saidthat they sent out a
questionnaire to you know allthe incumbents and our trustees
and candidates and I think onlytwo of y'all responded and you
was one of them.
Can you explain, I guess, whatare your thoughts on the

(49:37):
incident that happened at Roy JSmith Middle School, because I
know it's definitely a touchysubject for everyone involved,
including Colleen ISD, foreveryone involved, including
Colleen ISD.
But, like I said, you were oneof the only ones.
I think the two candidates werethe only ones that answered the
questionnaire.

Lan Carter (49:58):
Oh, that's disappointing.
Well, obviously it was atragedy for everyone involved,
both the victim and the allegedperpetrator.
So it was a tragedy foreverybody in the community
because in their mind it couldhave been them, it could have
been their child that didn'tcome home that day.
So that was an eye-openingexperience, especially how to

(50:24):
handle bullying within theschools.
That is something that KISDhasn't done successfully.
Parents have complained aboutthat for years and up until
recently, because of the tragedy, things hadn't changed.
So since the tragedy, dr Fayhas implemented some new
policies and procedures to dealwith discipline as far as

(50:46):
bullying Okay.
Discipline as far as bullyingOkay.
But unfortunately the aftermathbullying still occurs.
From my understanding, I haveclients that go to KISD and
they're saying they're stillbeing bullied.
So there's no quick fix for theproblem, unfortunately.

Yeah, and I mean bullying has been around forever
, I'm sure, in schools.
I remember bullies in my highschool, but I think the thing
that's different is social media.
Now kids are recording thisstuff and putting it online and
it's there forever.

Lan Carter (51:31):
Yep, you're correct, and there's so many different
types of bullying now.
Before it was more physical,and now we have emotional
bullying, we have sexualbullying, we have cyber bullying
, like you said, and so I thinkit has a lot to do with
educating the staff on thedifferent types of bullying and
how to handle the bullying.
You know, simply just saying,okay, someone reports the

(51:54):
bullying and you send them backto class.
That's not okay.
You have to investigate thebullying as immediately as
possible, while it's still freshin the victim's mind, and deal
with the perpetrator the allegedperpetrator as well.
You don't want to have themgoing back to the same class
after the bullying happened.
You know what I mean.

It's traumatic.
So, colleen ISD, theyimplemented a no cell phone
policy and that was brought upduring this incident because you
know it was hard for parents totry to reach their child during
this incident.
What is your stance on the cellphone policy?

Lan Carter (52:33):
I understand the no cell phone policy and, as an
educator, I appreciate the nocell phone policy.
I taught in a district thatalso had a no cell phone policy,
but we didn't take it to thepoint to where we had spent
money on pouches.
I disagree with the spending onpouches.
I thought that was a wastefulamount of money that was spent.

(52:55):
I think they could have justused the policy that they had
and enforced it throughout thedistrict and I think that it's
simply telling the students youknow you can use a cell phone
for academic purposes when ateacher tells you to.
You can use a cell phone foracademic purposes when a teacher
tells you to, for instance.
In that situation I would havewanted to hear from my student.

(53:16):
I would want my student to havetheir cell phone available to
call me and wake up a tragedy.

So I don't appreciate the fact that the
students have to have itunlocked in order to be able to
be used.
Yeah, so you know where.
I hear a lot about clean ISDand juveniles, because the
commissioner's court, we wesupport and fund our juvenile
services and juvenile detentioncenter, so and the we establish

(53:45):
a truancy court for kids that donot attend school.
So that's where I have myinteractions with Clean ISD.
I do know that, outside oftruancy, one of the big issues
is vaping, Because if it's ahemp or CBD or THC type product,

(54:06):
that's a felony.
A hemp or CBD or THC typeproduct, that's a felony.
So we have kids that are vaping, that are young kids, getting
charged with felonies for vaping, and I do know that there's
probably some legislation thatmight be coming down to address

(54:27):
some of those things, but it'sbeen very hard on our students
because they're getting chargedwith felonies at a young age.

Lan Carter (54:36):
Yeah, and I do think that's too harsh.
You know, back in our day itwas cigarettes, right, it was
just okay, it's bad for you, butyou, you didn't get charged
with a, with a, a crime, so acrime.
So, yeah, I think it's.
It's ruining a child's lifebefore they even get ready to
start.

On, also on Colleen ISD, not Colleen ISD Colleen
Daily Herald.
They had a poll and the I'llread the poll.
It says do you think leadershipchanges are needed in Colleen
independent school district inthe wake of last month's fatal
student stabbing incident?
I'm going to assume you wouldsay yes because you're running,

(55:17):
but the poll was interesting.
They have five options.
Yes, blame for this incidentgoes all the way to the top.
New superintendent is needed.
This blame for this incidentgoes all the way to the top New
superintendent is needed.
And that got 15.4%.
25% people said yes.
The incident reveals a lack ofplanning and oversight.

(55:39):
Multiple changes should be made.
7.7% said no.
The focus should be on campusleadership, not the district's
top administrator.
And then 34.6% of the peoplesaid no.
Even the best policies andprocedures might not have
prevented this tragic incident.
So it sounds like the yes andno's are almost even a little

(56:04):
bit.
And then 17.3% of people areunsure, and then 17.3% of people
are unsure.
So to me I think that's a greatpoll.
If people that read the localpaper, they're most likely going
to be voters and if they're onColleen Daly Harrell's website,

(56:26):
they're looking for information.
If they're taking this poll,they're probably going to vote
so that that lets you know thatyou got 17% of the uh elect
electorate, that you should beable to influence uh with uh,
your, your policies and ideas.
I know uh Colleen Daly did.

(56:46):
Uh, I think they did aninterview with your opponent and
I watched that and I wassurprised because, well, first
of all, they didn't ask himanything about vouchers, but
they did ask him about gettingrid of the Department of
Education and he supported that.
How can you be a school boardtrustee and support abolishing

(57:12):
the Department of Education?

Lan Carter (57:15):
Yeah, I was surprised about that too as well
.
But yeah, he is actually insupport of vouchers.
He said that yesterday at acandidate summit.

Oh, he did, Okay, okay.

Lan Carter (57:25):
He is in support of the idea of getting choice and
vouchers, but he doesn't agreewith taking money from public
funds that's what he said Frompublic schools.
So he did stipulate that.
But yeah, I found itinteresting that he said that
too, as far as you know, whichmakes me think maybe he doesn't

(57:47):
really know all the programsthat fall under the Department
of Education and how theDepartment of Education works.

Yeah.
So from my understanding of, Iguess, the most interaction the
Department of Education has withschool districts school
districts it's the specialeducation programs and different
like Title IX protections andall these special education

(58:17):
stuff.
Is that a fair statement?

Lan Carter (58:20):
Yes, that's a fair statement.

Okay, okay, and I'm assuming all those are going to
go to the state.

Lan Carter (58:28):
Yes, which is really sad because the state doesn't
always get it right as well.
So that's, and so departmenteducation would be the last step
on the line, basically to get,um, to get it right, basically
yeah, well, the state is doing ahorrible you remember, our
state for uh tea was uh tea wasout of compliance for special

(58:50):
education years ago.
And so the Department ofEducation came in and did a
bunch of listening sessions toprovide oversight of basically
why, and they decided, theyruled basically that TEA was out
of compliance.
They said that only 8% ofspecial ed students, only 8% of
students, could be consideredspecial ed at that time.

Yeah, no, it's definitely.
It's not something I support.
It sounds like it's notsomething you support.
So there's a clear contrast tome with you and and uh, your
opponent, that you know yousupport public education and you
do not support the abolishmentof the Department of Education

(59:39):
and giving our money, our schooldollars, our tax dollars, to
private schools.
That's something that I was atthe NAACP event a couple of
weeks ago and I talked to ourstate representative.
He's the chairman of theeducation committee and wrote

(01:00:02):
the voucher program and I toldhim about the property tax issue
that I don't hear anyone, zero,asking about school choice or
sending their kids to privateschools.
But what I do hear about isproperty taxes are too high and
what can we do to fix it.
And I told them that billiondollars that you're funneling to

(01:00:26):
these businesses because that'swhat they are, they're
businesses that that money couldgo to lowering property taxes.
And he said, oh, yeah, we'redoing all these things right now
for property taxes and businesstaxes, which they are, and
that's great, but you could puta billion more dollars in that

(01:00:48):
type of relief.
We're not going to get anyrelief zero relief for funding
this voucher program.

Lan Carter (01:01:02):
And not much of it's going to go to, even though I
know he has two standalone billsbasically where supposedly
we're supposed to get additionalmoney.
I don't see it happening.

Louie Minor (01:01:14):
Yeah.

I just see it being a detriment to the public
schools.

Yeah, so, lan, we'll go ahead and start
wrapping things up.
I just want to let people knowsome information about the
actual election.
We already passed the last dayto register.
The last day to register tovote was April 3rd, so if you're
not registered by now, it's toolate for this election, but you
can still help get people tothe polls.

(01:01:42):
Early voting starts April 22ndand then election day is May 3rd
.
That's all correct.

Yes.

Okay, and there's different polling locations that
you could go to in the city ofKilleen.
Killeen ISD covers more thanjust city of Killeen.
What I know it's likeNolanville and Harker Heights.
Is that anywhere elseNolanville?

Harker Heights and, of course, well, yes, you know
Fort Hague, but Fort Hague Idon't.
The polling sites areeverything clean?

Yeah, so those uh, and then uh, if you wanted to
know more information wherepolling locations are at uh for
early voting, uh, that'll be atuh Killeen city hall, jackson uh
learning center and lions uhsenior park.
That'll be at Killeen City Hall, jackson Learning Center and
Lyons Senior Park.
And then, I'm pretty sure, inNolanville and in Harker Heights
.
They both have places to vote.

(01:02:38):
It's usually their library ortheir senior center over there.
So if someone wants to getinvolved to help you out, learn
more about Land Carter, wherecan they go?

They can go to my Facebook page.
It's Land4CleanISD, or they cango to my website, which is
boat4landorg.
Okay, all right.

Any last words Land that you would like to leave a
parting message to the listeners.

That I would really appreciate your vote.
I think it's really importantthat we get some new faces in
and make some changes within thedistrict, because the district
is very disconnected and I thinkthat we can do it.
I think that me being thatvoice can set a good example for
the other board members wherethey need to step up to the

(01:03:34):
plate.

I totally agree with that.
You have my support.
I'm the lone voice on thecommissioner's court and I do
everything I can to push thenarrative of things that we're
doing right, things we're doingwrong, narrative of things that
we're doing right, things we'redoing wrong and try to invite
the public in to help us figureit out, because it's not just me
or my ideas, it's the publicthat I represent that these

(01:04:00):
ideas come from.
So thank you for running andwe'll do everything we can to
help you out and I'm sure thecitizens listening if they're
not convinced yet, they'reprobably convinced now to go out
and support you.
So thank you, lan Carter, fordoing our show and we'll talk to

(01:04:25):
you later.

Thank you for having me, thank you for what you do
All right.

Thank you for having me, thank you for doing

(01:04:50):
what you do.
All right, thank you.
Thank you.
We'll be you next time.

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