February 7, 2024 • 57 mins
Saturday, May 4, is the official date of the 2024 General Election in Leander, Texas. Mayor and Councilmembers Place 2, Place 4, and Place 6 will be on the ballot. Incumbents for those places include Esmeralda Mattke Longoria (Place 2), who we sat down with this week to discuss what she sees ahead for the City of Leander. Part of the Vote in Leander Series for 2024.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I recently had the opportunity to sitdown with Esmeralda Matki Longoria, who is
the current occupant of Place two onCity Council and recently announced her intent to
run for reelection. I invite youto join our conversation. This is Lean
and Leander. So I'm back hereat Fifth Element and we're doing the second
(00:36):
interview in the Voting Leander series fortwenty twenty four and I'm here with Asmi
Matki Longoria, right. Yes,is that the Well, my official name
is Esmeralda Maki Longoria, but somecity council they did abbreviate it because it
is a long name. So Iwant to admit that that was my fault
(00:57):
because I had practiced that in myhead and I forgot because I'm used to
calling you as me. That's thething is. It's funny. It's funny
because it's almost full circle because thelast time we sat down and you and
I sat down, when you initiallyran, yes, I was very conscious
about making sure I pronounced your namecorrectly, and I was very much as
(01:18):
Malda. But now I'm like,oh, you're as me. I don't
even think of it that way anymore. Is that some people have problems saying
Asmeralda and some people have problems sayingas me, so strangely, as Maeralda
is easier for some people. Reallygo with that, okay, all right,
And I did have a name change. I did get married and wanted
to address that. So yep,no, I have life. And then
(01:40):
you're jumping ahead, You're getting you'regetting my questions out before I even ask
them. No anyway, So no, And just for the record, as
me and I after her run,we've kind of had several opportunities to work
with each other, most recently onthe Economic Development Committee, which I mentioned
the last episode. You were,I think towards the last year that I
(02:05):
was on that particular committee, youwere the council representatives. So you and
I have had several opportunities to talk. I don't want anybody to think that
you know, there's anything beyond justthat familiarity. We know each other from
that perspective, and I try tostay as as neutral for the conversations that
we have because what I want isthat anyone who's watching or listening to the
to the episode gets a sense ofwho you are, and that's really more
(02:30):
important for me than any of theother things. And because you're an incumbent,
we will talk about a few thelittle other things. But outside of
that, I want to just makesure that people know who you are,
where you come from, how yougot here, that type of thing.
So, and thank you for yourservice on economic development. We really rely
on volunteers from the community to getinvolved in boards and commissions. So thank
(02:51):
you for your service. Yeah,no, sure, it was. It
was. It was pleasurable while Idid it. I was a little little
disappointing that I didn't get you know, it didn't get re up, but
you know, hey it is.Everybody's got to get a chance to get
and get in there and get theirvoice heard. So I'm all for that.
Thank you for carrying it. Yeah. No, I didn't want to
do that either, but hey,there you go. So, yeah,
it was a good experience. Idid get a lot out of it,
(03:12):
and it's kind of helped me beable to kind of from my perspective as
a citizen, kind of get aperspective on what's actually happening within the city
as far as of planning. Fromthe economic development perspective, it's really nice
to have had that visibility into things, and I definitely encourage anybody who would
want to be on that type ofcommittee or even just interested in seeing what
the committee does. Their meetings arequarterly now, and so if you're interested
(03:37):
in that, show up to oneof the meetings. And just I had
people pop in all the time.It was always interesting. But anyway,
so from that perspective, again,you're raised in Texas, right, I
remember it was Laredo, right,Corpus Christy. I know that was a
terrible thing to say to someone fromCorporus Christy. Okay, it was Corpus
(03:58):
Christy. Your family had some ranchlandout there, right, I remember some
of those conversations from the last time. So why don't you give our listeners
a little bit of a taste ofwhere you came from. I'm a native
Texan. My family was in Texassince Texas was formed as part of a
state, and so my family's beenhere quite a long time. We did
have and we do have ranch landstill in South Texas, which is even
(04:23):
further from Corpus Christie. So grewup in Corpus Christi. I'm one of
four girls, three sisters, lotsof cousins, big family, and I
feel like everyone's related to me.Don't have a lot of family left in
Corpus Christy anymore, but my mommy parents live in San Antonio. So
(04:44):
you were one of the things wetalked about the last time, because you
were a new candidate the last timeyou and I sat down kind of at
the at that point in time,I was still pretty new in Leander as
well, so I was kind ofgetting to know a lot of people.
But what I've learned since then isthat you know, there there's a group
of people that you can kind of, for lack of better terms, count
on being somewhere involved making their voiceheard. And you quickly became part of
(05:08):
that group. In my opinion,I mean, just it's me watching and
like, hey, so you werepretty vocal on a number of things,
and I know that you are verycommunity oriented from that perspective. So what
have been some of the things thatyou have learned as you've served on council
over the last three years. Soone thing is I live on the east
(05:30):
side of Leander, so I'm inthe east most neighborhood in Leander. So
one thing that kind of helps meis to talk to people who live on
kind of central Leander where we are, or even west, just some of
the pain points with the train andthe timing and that kind of thing that
I don't see because I'm on theeast side. So my position is at
large, and I just want topeople to know that, right, so
(05:54):
I serve all the citizens of Leander. I cannot pick and choose. So
when you're asking about what things I'velearned, I would say, there's a
lot. You have to come prepared. I was a new person last time,
and now I have almost three yearsexperience, and it's a lot of
information. It's not just coming prepared, but there were so many things that
(06:15):
were happening. Were a growing city, one of the fastest scrooring cities in
America, and we have water infrastructureissues and those you know, to quote
a resident in the city, theysaid, we really don't have time for
on the job training with new people, because I at least have that experience
with water and being able to justprepare, I mean, the challenges of
(06:36):
the city. It's actually more thanjust water, right, all the things
that the boards and commissions, howthe city operates, city staff. So
I had a learning curve and itwas pretty steep. And three years later,
I feel pretty confident of my workon city Council and preparing for meetings.
And it's not just city council twotimes a week for a volunteer position,
(07:00):
also on some other commissions, andwe can talk about that later,
but I want to talk about whatare those accomplishments and where I represent Leander.
Okay, I think that's fair,and represent Leander is part of the
way that I like to make sureand frame the positions. It's a little
(07:21):
bit of an easier conversation when you'retalking to the mayor because people just assume,
oh, the mayor is the mayorof the city, right, But
when you start to talk about theindividual council members, there's not nearly as
much clarity, even though, asyou mentioned, it is at large.
Okay, so you are representing theentire thirty nine square miles, right.
(07:41):
I think it is so from thatperspective, but you bring to your point,
you bring a certain perspective. Again, you are a citizen and a
homeowner on the east side of thecity, and the day to day is
a little bit different there than itwould be necessarily over here on the west
side. It's not much space Okay, it's again it's not a huge giant
(08:05):
town, but I always find thatvery striking because I live over here.
I live closer to Fifth Element,which is maybe not such a great thing
all the time, but it's different. Like just the day to day pace
and feel of living here in Leanderis a little bit different over here.
So when I drive over to likebar w and I'm over there on the
(08:28):
furthermost east side and kind of seeingwhat's going on there, it just it's
different. It just feels different.This is a little bit older, a
little bit more established as far assome of the you know, I don't
know features, and and you know, you spend a little bit more time
in old Leander per se and thennecessarily in the newer parts. So again,
(08:50):
the other part of that is that, of course is as a council
member, it is a volunteer position. There's no advalorum or anything like that.
You guys are doing this because thisis how you volunteer your time.
You just had go through the processof letting people pick you to volunteer your
time. Right. So I'm happyto say I'm really proud that I've missed
one regular city council meeting in almostthree years. So I'm dedicated and a
(09:13):
lot of times I won't fault someof my fellow city council members from other
cities, but they're saying, hey, we don't get paid, so maybe
some people may not put in theeffort. I'm not calling out anyone's names,
but that's not me. I'm thetype of person that is dependable,
hard working. I'm going to putin the effort, proud to say I've
only missed one regular city council meeting, and I come prepared and it's it's
(09:39):
a lot of work, it is, and I'm glad you've brought that up,
because, again from the perspective ofwhat the accomplishments are. From a
council member's perspective, again, councilis charged with some principal folk us Number
(10:01):
one being the budget, Number twobeing the various rules and regulations for lack
of better terms that the city runswith. And then number three and probably
not in order, but number threewould be giving guidance to the staff and
understanding the particulars of the operation ofthe city. So when you started,
(10:22):
like when you and I first hada conversation, one of the things that
you mentioned in our interview a coupleof years ago, was as a newbie
coming on, you were a littlebit concerned about housing and the affordability of
housing and the availability of housing.So let's look at that from a perspective
of like a marker. So youcame to council with feeling it's one of
(10:46):
the things that I would say andcorrect me if I'm wrong on one of
the motivators that you said, Ihave to get involved, right, that
was one of the things. Sousing that as your marker, do you
feel that in the ensuing years there'sbeen an improvement in that particular area,
and if so, how do youfeel that your participation, your peace helped
(11:09):
with that. Definitely, I thinkthat housing is still a challenge. The
city council gets kind of blamed alot of times for building apartments, and
some of those were approved before Iwas on city council, so they're just
long time coming. As with everythingin America, everything has gone up in
price everything. That means it takeslonger for our developers to build some of
(11:33):
these apartments, so they weren't necessarilyapproved. Under me, I would say
that this council is mindful of growingcommercial. That has been our focus,
so commercial, and we still getdinged a little bit from that perspective because
residents say, oh, but waterand apartments and commercial, But we do
need to expand our tax space tobe able to provide for those water infrastructure
(11:58):
projects that take a lot of moneyand are needed as we grow the city
to possibly one hundred and seventy fivethousand to two hundred thousand, right,
and what does that look like?Right? Right? And it's a really
good point from that perspective because again, those those key issues don't necessarily change
(12:18):
in that short period of time.I mean, you know, part of
what you ran for, if Iremember correctly, was you know, adding
some additional voices to the mix.I think you were concerned at the time
that not enough representation was was onthe council at that particular time. Again
(12:41):
we're talking about three years ago.But listen, one of the reasons I
ran was government transparency. At thetime that I was running, one thing
that really bothered me as a residentwas that residents could not do public comments.
That was really at the highest partof my list. And I've im
packed a change. So and whenI say I I'm one of seven right,
(13:03):
So I can only do that withworking well with others. But as
far as government transparency, we wereable to bring back public comments, bring
back the library rentals and those thosethings that people ask for. That said,
you know, that is not right. We really want to be able
to express ourselves in public comments.And I believe in the Constitution and people's
(13:24):
right to express themselves, freedom ofspeech. And excuse my voice. I
have allergies, That's all right,no worries, I know, but no
one will tell you. Just wantjust on the record now, because I
always boast I never have allergies.Okay, are here, We are all
right. So, yeah, youhit on a couple of things there that
I think that that are important,and I would tend to agree with you
(13:48):
from the perspective of you know,there there were some limitations as to what
you could do as just a generalcitizen in Leander, and I don't want
to say that that is dramatically changed, because there's been changes for the positive,
but I still think there are naturalimpediments, natural barriers to that that
(14:15):
are no fault of anybody. Okay, you know, you have a city
that goes from twenty thirty thousand peopleto eighty thousand people literally almost overnight,
you're going to have growing pains,and that's one of the growing pains.
I've applaud the council in this pastterm because they've started to address some of
those things, and some of theway that they're addressing it is very visible
and very transparent. Is it onehundred percent there in my opinion, No,
(14:41):
but you can see the changes arebeing made. So I think that's
that bodes well for the city asin a long term. I can't remember
who it was, but I wasin one of the committee meetings. We
had a guest speaker and one ofthe things that he mentioned was when you
(15:01):
are in public service, you're onlythere for a short period of time.
The city keeps going like the citynever stops. That goes on and on
and on and on and on.So whatever you do in that one little
period of time that you're there,it could have some impact, you know,
five ten years down the road.But again, eventually something else is
going to replace that. Something elseis going to be part of that conversation.
(15:22):
And for us here in Leander,again you hit on a couple of
the main things. So from thatperspective. I think that's kudos because I
think the council has done a goodjob, and I know that you're one
of the voices in that. Areyou there yet? And I will just
say that when I ran last time, I was by just a normal citizen.
(15:43):
Yes, I was involved in thecommunity as much as I could be,
but I started noticing what the citycouncil was doing, and then then
I wanted to get involved. SoI applaud people who want to get involved
and who do put themselves out therefor running. And it's it's not easy
and to be as transparent as possible, but there are a lot of rules
around open meetings and what we're ableto do. Sure, and so yeah,
(16:06):
no, and again you're hitting onsome things that are like that's experience
that tells you that because I can, I can reflect the exact same thing.
All right. I'm not even oncouncil, all right, but with
any of the involvement I've had incommittees. As the city has matured in
an understanding of how things are supposedto be done, they've also kind of
(16:33):
emphasized some of the things that arenecessary to do it right. So you
mentioned open meetings laws, and thingsof that nature. Those are pretty restricting.
At the end of the day,it's nobody's fault. It's legislature.
That's just how the legislature has chosento do it whenever they chose to do
it. A good example of somethingthat was done several years ago that's now
like here the ramifications of this decisionwe make many years ago. But it
(16:56):
does restrict what you can say,how you can say it, and how
often. And you can necessarily havean open conversation about something because there are
some legal limitations. That said,again, I think the city does a
better job of representing what they do. I want to pivot a little bit
there because one of the things thatI know you've had some experience with now
(17:18):
was something that actually I became awareof probably a few years ago, more
like municipal leagues and things of thatnature. And I think CAPCOG is one
of those. And I believe thatyou're participating on that now, right.
Is that as a city representative oris that you independently saying Hey, I'm
going to do this as a cityrepresentative. So I am on the executive
(17:41):
committee for CAPCOG, and CAPCOG isa capital Area Council of Governments and for
their regions. Specifically, they supportten counties. So I think most people
and most of your listeners know thatLander falls and two counties, Travis and
Williamson County, so two of ourcounties are in the CAPCOG ten County.
So what CAPCOG does is regional planning, and they addressed solid waste, law
(18:07):
enforcement training, clean air, andI'm part of the clean Air coalition.
They also do area aging, sothe meals on wheels, everything that's funded
approved for this ten county region goesthrough CAPCOG nine one one fees, emergency
communications. How we take our nineto one one calls. So how I
(18:33):
got involved in this is, youknow, the mayor when I first joined
council, Becky was asked to docap Metro and I would have done that
one too, or there was waterand I think Nicole picked that one and
I really wanted to get involved withCAPCOG. So I have experience with government.
I was a state employee. Iworked with some of these state agencies
(18:56):
Texas Department of Human Services helping humanservice and all those state agencies work with
CAPCOG, and so I am arepresentative on the Executive Committee. I'm also
on the General Assembly, and MayorDelisle and Council Member Thompson are also on
the General Assembly. So the GeneralAssembly is just a larger group and it's
(19:18):
various city council members. It's alsocounty commissioners, so people have different roles.
And then I'm on the Executive Committee, which is comprised of judges,
county commissioners, city council members,and I represent large cities I believe,
over twenty five thousand, but there'sonly so many spots for different cities representing.
(19:44):
We have Flugerville on there and roundRock, but not every city around
here is represented there, just becausethere is only so many slots per population.
So I'm also on the clean Airand clean air is important to me,
so we approve for devices in thecounty in that town county region that
(20:06):
is monitors air quality. There's alot to air quality, right, No,
I would imagine I mean that that. So what that makes me want
to ask, is that, Okay, so there's some there's some additional time
commitments to something like that. Soyou know, when you're when you're running
(20:29):
for council again, you you you'reessentially saying, hey, I want to
volunteer here. But because of theway that that particular volunteer position is constructed,
you have to be the person thatpeople elect to that position. But
it is essentially a volunteer position.I mean, there's no way about it
otherwise. That's what it is.So you're making a commitment to it's biweekly
(20:53):
council meetings, right, So twicea month you're you're prepping for council meetings,
and we do have some than twicea bit. There are special meetings
I've seen that, I've seen that. Okay. You also had, for
instance, a time commitment to theEconomic and Development Committee because you would show
up to our monthly meetings. Andthen you're doing CAPCOG on top of that,
(21:17):
which how often that does say?Executive committee meets once a month?
Okay, Then clean Air meets quarterlyI believe, And I'm also the council
liaison for area Aging and I believethat's quarterly that they meet as well.
Okay. But it is a timecommitment, and it is driving to South
Austin, and because the ten countyarea, it is widespread, right So
(21:38):
okay, So these are all thesecommitments that if I were to say,
hey, as mey, did youknow about that before you ran? What
would you say? I would say, no, okay, I yeah,
I didn't know how much time wasneeded. And so now after almost three
(21:59):
years, I know it takes abit huge commitment. So I applaud anyone
who puts themselves out there who whomay not know. But it is a
lot of time involved. It's notjust going to those two hour meetings.
It's preparing for those two hours.Wait too, sorry, they're not two
hours twice twice a month. Yeah, twice a month for council. You're
preparing for monthly meetings on the exact, preparing for quarterly meetings on a couple
(22:22):
of the other things that you doare no regular city council meetings usually run
from six to ten. So fora volunteer position, we're if you're lucky
if it ends at ten. Yeah. I've seen several of those go over.
But so yeah, again it's abig time commitment. But you have
a regular job, like you oryou know, I think you're still dell
right. No, I'm currently lookingfor my next employment, unemployed but still
(22:48):
going to be in the IT field. And one thing that is valuable for
your listeners to and watchers to knowis that what I do for a living
is very much like city planning.So I am a project manager, program
manager, business architect. So usuallywhen people ask, well, what does
a business architect do, I wouldapprove projects in a portfolio for multimillion dollar
(23:10):
companies. From an IT perspective,it projects. But how that relates to
city is it's very much approving thebudget, approving which projects we do,
making sure that we are managing thosetimelines now day to day. I won't
manage city staff, and I willI think most people know, but we
do not. We cannot tell citystaff what to do, so we go
(23:34):
everything goes through a city manager becausethat's just the way of our type government.
But we need to make sure.I need to be prepared to ask
those questions on timeline expectations. Youknow, are we meeting those timelines?
Because my brain this is a projectmanager and my kids, I mean,
I'm a mom too. I gota project managed kids, right, Have
(23:57):
you done your task? Yeah?No, I get it, and I
now more so than a few yearsago. Because I've always been personally,
I've always been in sales related rolesthroughout my career, and there's a modicum
of planning in that, but it'sreally more methodology than it is necessarily planning.
(24:19):
However, I too have kind ofpivoted a little bit in my career
and I've been doing essentially project managementfor the last few years, which gives
me a better understanding of, Okay, what are the complexities of what it
is that you're trying anything that you'retrying to do again, And just to
say that, one of the reasonsI ran as well is because I saw
(24:42):
these projects not being delivered. We'retalking the Senior Center was voted on by
bonds, by our residents, andjust was being installed, frankly by previous
councils. So as a project manager, I want to make sure let's push
those projects that make financial sense.I'm not saying let's approve all projects.
(25:03):
I'm saying, let's evaluate them andsee if we spend money for the senior
center. It was a no brainer. Somebody had donated land, Let's get
that built. The longer we delay, and unfortunately previous councils had delayed that,
and now here we are that everything'smore expensive in America, as I
said, right, So now wedon't have enough for the Senior Center and
(25:26):
it's out forbid right now. Sowe're making progress on these project completions,
I would say, and just beingable to push those projects through that makes
sense to push through if you will, right, So project management speak from
that perspective, address the backlog,right, yes, yeah, and it's
if it doesn't make sense, thenmove it back to the backlog and let's
(25:51):
work on things that we have activefunding for. Let's be creative and what
we're able to do. I mean, are we able to get grants that
are going to help us and we'vebeen able to do that. A lot
of people don't know this with capMetro. I know, it was kind
of a heated discussion, pretty dividedwith our city on voting for cap Metro,
but people are not aware that withour interlocal agreement, cap Metro is
(26:12):
giving back one point six million dollarsin projects around here that are related to
transportation. So we're trying to becreative and work smarter with the money that
we have, and I think that'salways it's easy to sit outside of that
equation and say, well, whycan't we just do it this way,
(26:33):
or why don't we just get outof this and let's take the money from
over here. But the reality ofthat is that it's much much more complex
and much much more convoluted then mostpeople will take the time to understand.
And again, I like having thesethe ability to have these conversations. It's
(26:55):
one of the nice things about beingin a community that's not you know,
five million people in that you know, my efforts can grant me an opportunity
to sit down with someone like yourselfor someone like the mayor or any of
the candidates who who will want todo this. Again, it's not as
a perspective of like, well,how qualified are you to do this,
(27:18):
although there is an aspect of that. I think it's fair to ask those
questions, but it's also like doyou understand what it is that you are
going to need to do? Whichfor me and again for my listeners,
this is the nice thing about beingable to come back to someone like yourself,
who I've interviewed previously, and youwere the shy girl who was running
for council and it was like itwas like pulling teeth. It was like
(27:42):
it was one of the hardest thingsI've ever done, and you were very
nervous, and that's totally understandable.But again, with time, you kind
of you're more comfortable. It's veryobvious to me that you're much more comfortable
in what it is that you're doing. And I love being on city coun
I can tell, I can tell, and I mean honestly. I mean
that in the most sincere way,because when I look at council members and
(28:03):
I can't say that I would,you know, rank them. That's not
fair. But what I look foris how representative are you? How often
do I see you at the things? Okay, and I was looking over
your new website for reelection, andyou have a bunch of pictures on there
about things that you've done, andI've been to a lot of those.
I remember seeing you at those things. So the community outreach aspect of being
(28:27):
a representative, I think is critical. We didn't even talk about that and
how much we have. That's again, that's why I'm bringing it up,
because on top of all those otherthings that we kind of delineated for time
consumption, you have to do,not have to, but I think it's
important that you do these other thingstoo, you know, show up to
the parade, show up to theopenings. I don't think it's reasonable for
(28:49):
us as citizens to ask volunteers tobe at everything. So the expectation possible,
it's impossible. There's too many.I have to say that most and
cuttings happen at three or four pm, and so I support the chamber,
love them, but I'm not ableto go because I work full time,
so a lot of the council commitmentsare during eight to five work hours.
(29:14):
So it definitely is kind of gearedtowards somebody who is doesn't have a full
time job. Like I said rightnow, I don't have a full time
job, so I can go tomore of those events. But I feel
like I have still managed to jugglethat career, being a mom, being
a city council member. It iswork life balance, right, sure,
No, absolutely, And again Ithink the emphasis in this particular interview has
(29:34):
been that time commitment because each councilthere's seven council members in total or at
six open six at large. Positionsin the mayor and the mayor always kind
of separate a little bit because there'ssome leadership aspect to that role that you're
more senior project manager if anything.Okay, so you're kind of like,
(29:55):
all right, what are we doing? But all the other council members should
be you know, in my opinion, this is me speaking. I'm not
speaking for anybody, nor is thisa representative of your view. But you
know, there's an expectation that asa representative, A, I should be
able to talk to you, likeI should be able to reach out to
you. I should be able toget some opportunity to at least express myself.
(30:15):
And that b that that is somethingI hear, that's something I see
when I'm looking at those representatives,and I think that's important for people to
consider. Again, it's it's fairto say there's an aspect of a popularity
contest and these types of things.Okay, name recognition, visibility is all
(30:37):
part of that. I'm not oneto, you know, be so naive
to the process to not actually recognizeHey, that's part of the process.
And look, it's our job asrepresentatives for the city to listen to all
residents in the city. I maynot agree with them, they may not
agree with me. They just maynot like me for whatever reason. I
(30:57):
can't change that. But I'm hereto listen. And that's why we restore
public comments. And I do enjoywhen people do engage in civic behavior and
come to our city council meetings.And so before you're throwing darts or being
couch potato, I forget the footballrecordare quarter arm share quarterback gun. It's
(31:18):
easier to throw darts at what wedo without knowing all the information. And
I get that. I was oneof those people who threw darts and said,
you know what, I think Ican do better. And if that
city council had been doing what Ithought was their job, I wouldn't have
ran. If you would have askedme ten years ago, and I might
have said this last time, Iwould not have predicted I would run.
(31:41):
I'm an introvert by nature. Ithink you need those diverse people on city
councils. If you have a sevenpanel with all extroverts, things might not
get done. I'm not saying extrovertsdon't, because they clearly have project management
skills. But what I'm saying isI'm going to lean into being an extrovert.
Introvert and my husband will say I'man extrovert because I talk too much,
(32:04):
but it really is dependent on whoI'm talking to. Absolutely. I
like to be quiet on city councilmeetings and ask relevant questions. I'm not
there just to talk to talk.I'm there to bring up a question that
I think a resident in the citywould ask. And you're right, it's
easy to throw darts, but theydon't have how the sausage is made,
(32:25):
and that is difficult, and thatcomes with experience, in three years of
experience, and I feel like Ihave that no. No, I would
say yes to all of the above, because again, I have the perspective
of somebody who has watched that progressfor you as a council member from three
years ago when you were running tonow. And again we've had the opportunity
(32:47):
and again all disclaimers, we've hadthe opportunity to interact on a number of
conversation points as well as potential projectsfor the city. And it's always something
that I've struck I've been struck withwhen talking to you, is that you
and this is not meant to bea bad thing, this is a good
thing. You don't answer right away, You don't you have a tendency to
(33:10):
like let me find out about that. It's one of those things and I'm
like, you know, At first, I was like, wait, I
speak, No, see I'm clearlyinterrupting, So it's fine. No.
Again, we know each other,so it's okay. But no. From
that perspective, I think it's somethingthat brings a very unique approach to some
(33:31):
of the conversations that need to takeplace on council. You're you're you don't
come in with an opinion. Ithink it's fair. I don't know if
you you may have you may beformulating an opinion, you may be formulating
an idea, but you're not overtin driving that as a cause. You
know, you're not You're not bangingthe gavel right away. You're you're waiting
(33:52):
to hear what other people have tosay about something before you're actually speaking in
a representative And I think that's importantwhen I'm talking about people coming to City
Council because a lot of people doactually watch online. So thank you for
watching online if you do. ButI think it's important to go there and
speak, and you get three minutesto speak, so I do like to
(34:12):
listen to both sides. So wehave quite a few neighborhood issues where we
had to close one seventy seven.That road is really treacherous, and we
listened to the neighbors and as acouncil, we came together. And I
would say over the past year totwo this council has been unanimous on a
lot of decisions, and so thatshows me that we work together. But
what I would ask the public iscome to our city council meetings, get
(34:35):
your voice heard, and go infront of city council. And it can
be a little intimidating to be infront of seven people who are sitting above
you. I kind of wish wewere at the same level as people.
But yeah, the dayas can bea little intimidating. I'll the cop to
that. I've I've spoken in frontof council a couple of times, and
in certain instances I'm fine, butthere's been I think at least one topic.
(34:57):
I can't remember what it was specifically, but I got real nervous.
I can't. I do not understandthat to this day, because obviously not
the kind of guy who gets reallynervous. It was funny. It's it's
funny how that and I started toput people at ease when they're up there.
I try to smile at them andlook I may not agree with every
resident in the city, and Ibet you I don't. But if there's
(35:17):
a neighborhood issued like the closing oneseventy seven, we listened to the neighbors
and came to that decision. SoI do like to have that point of
view of come to city council andtell us what is bothering you. If
not, we're not going to know, send us an email. We do
read our emails, and our emailsare public records, so people can look
at our emails. Do public request, open records request, And so I
(35:43):
encourage people to get involved and tobe able to tell us what they want.
Because if I see something that's ona neighborhood, I won't and nobody's
saying anything about it, I'm goingto think that everything's great and there's no
issue. But if people come tocity council, they can get their view
heard. And I think that's reallya nonpartisan thing. I mean that is
we make decisions listening to the community. Yeah, And it's a good point
(36:07):
because again, local decision making localpolitics is not the same thing, nor
should it be conflated with some ofthe larger political conversations that take place Unfortunately
that happens. It's just part ofI think the culture here in the United
(36:27):
States. It's just it's it's acultural thing for a group a group of
people, like not everybody. There'sa there's a there's a culture here that
there's a whole lot of people whojust don't care and just go about their
daily business. There's a culture thatpeople make assumptions about politicians. Right at
the end of the day, I'ma politician, So people can make decisions
about that without knowing as me andthe person right, So you're right,
(36:52):
it's a little divided, but atthe end of the day, local politics
should not be partisan. Local politicsis fixing stop lights, and I'm happy
to say that that's one thing Iran onto fixing these uncompleted projects. We
were able to install two lights atSunny and Baghdad and Ronald Reagan and here
Away and really public safety is importantto me. CAPCOG is very much more
(37:16):
on the safety side of things,and that's why I wanted to get involved
in things like CAPCOG because I havethat government experience and it is a non
part is an environment and it's itwas a passion for mine to learn more
about those items that CAPCOG does well, and again it to me it underscores
(37:37):
a willingness and a desire to understandthe complexities of the issues, a lot
of the issues. In my mind, I try to be here in the
podcast and then and when I havejust general conversations and you know, it's
really more, well, what's weneed to zoom out a little bit,
(37:58):
right, Okay, we need tolook at it, like, right,
what's the overall influencers in this oneparticular issue and how much can we necessarily
do about it? Can only controlthe controllables, right, You can only
control what it is that's actually withinyour purview to control everything outside of that.
Well, that brings a good pointbecause the state legislature has really passed
(38:21):
a lot of laws where we cannotintervene in certain cases. So at the
city level, our hands are tiedto do some things, and so we
try to be transparent when people cometo city council saying we can't block this
from being developed because it's already beenapproved and we can't. It's just the
way the state government has limited cities'rights, and we do get involved in
(38:44):
that too, to see what arethose changes that are going on at the
state legislature, the legislature that's goingto impact our city. No, And
it is one of the points thatagain I think this came up when I
was talking to Christine a couple ofweeks ago, but it's it's an understanding
of some of those fundamentals as faras governance is concerned. And to me,
(39:07):
it's one of the points where Idon't applying on a whole lot,
but it is one of the opinionsthat I held and that I will be
very public about. Is like,look, your counsel is not the people
that you need to look at ifyou need to really want to make a
change, it's substantive. You needto look at your state representatives, okay,
because they're the ones that are actuallyinfluencing any legislation that's going on.
(39:30):
And you know, there's a lotin this state that happens. I mean
I remember at one point looking atthe you know, what was essentially the
state constitution and the way that Texasis done if correct me if I'm wrong,
as you might know this, butyou know, basically we amend the
constitution with every single thing that wedo. Every legislative setting is adding additional
(39:53):
complexity to the state constitution. Essentially, they're not separate laws. They all
flow back in to the constitutional purviewof the State of Texas, which I
find tremendously interesting, tremendously complex,complex, and I would argue, probably
the wrong way to do things.It just it makes things a lot harder
(40:15):
than they necessarily need to be.I think it's on purpose, that's my
opinion, but you know, hey, it is what it is. What
it is, right, And backto open meetings, that's one thing.
It's those levers that the state hasdecided we don't want the cities to do.
And some of it is for thebenefit of the residents to not being
able to have all city council memberstalk about an agenda item that's part of
(40:37):
open meetings, but some of itis a little too deprecuremental and too It
really makes it where the city cannotthe city council cannot make a decision,
and that's unfortunate, and we usuallyrelay that to our residents saying this is
a case where we cannot do itright. It is restrictive. I mean
again, I've had some experience withthat, even just on a committee.
(40:58):
It it just becomes very difficult toget anything done. Again, I think
that's by design, and maybe there'sa little bit of thought put into that
in that you don't end up witha bunch of runaway ideas. You know,
everything's kind of rained in, alittle bit sore. There's some benefit
to it from that perspective. ButI do agree that. I think,
(41:20):
yeah, it definitely has I'd saya little bit more on the minor side,
but that's just me. Okay,that's just me. But a lot
of people in the community who say, oh, why are we not doing
that development? Why has that stopped? And I think it's more of how
the sausage is made and what you'resaying. They don't have the full picture
of what the city council can affectfor change. I mean, if I
(41:44):
approve a business and then they cannotget the funding to do their project,
that's not the city council's that's right. Like I said, in America,
things have gotten a lot more expensive. People are going to the grocery store.
It's more expensive. Believe me,I unemployed. Now. I understand
it's very difficult to live. Butalso these builders, these developers, I
(42:07):
mean, if they have to builda location. Everything's just going to cost
more to do the development, todo the construction, it's going to cost
more. So I find it interestingwhen people say, well, why is
this project not done, when itreally is that business didn't do what they
were supposed to do, or ifwe gave them an incentive and they did
(42:27):
not meet their deadlines. I don'tthink that should be the city council's fault.
That really should be taking accountability frombusinesses. I support local businesses,
but there's a lot involved, right, so I think the city council gets
a lot of discord, I guessor yeah, I mean, we did
talk about We talked a little bitabout this in the last episode as well.
(42:49):
You know, the thing is thatand you're bringing up an additional aspect
to that. Again, it's acomplex conversation. The developers who have in
approved to do a project, there'sa lot of complexity that they need to
navigate as a developer outside of whatthe city is necessarily asking for. Now,
(43:12):
the city will create avenues that areaddressing larger ideas and larger needs for
the city, and they'll also preventdevelopers from just going bananas and just doing
whatever they want to do, whichI'm not saying anybody's doing that, but
there's a balance there guard right,right, it's guardrails, it's guardrails,
(43:36):
and then I know that a lotof times in conversations I've had developers will
say, hey, this is oneof the hardest places to do a project.
It's hard to do business in Leander. That's reasonable, And on that
note, we have made a lotof changes as far as streamlining the development
process, so there are positive changeson that. It's just that at the
end of the day, once they'repast a certain point and that company doesn't
(43:59):
develop, that's not the city council'sfault. That's like, why didn't you
develop? And maybe there's other hurdlesbeyond what we can control. Right,
things got more expensive, I think, like for the knife manufacturer, things
just got more expensive for them,and it was it's kind of a bad
time in America since twenty twenty totwenty twenty four, right, And hopefully
the economy improves improves, But herewe are. When you really need that
(44:22):
money to build that and you don'thave it, what are you going to
do? As far as people sayingLeander is difficult to do, I think
this City Council specifically has addressed thatover the past two years for streamlining development.
Now, we did assign ordinance,and nothing's perfect, and so you're
going to have things that do taketime and there are certain projects that need
(44:45):
more approvals on different things that areoutside of the City Council's purview. Like
you're saying right, right, Andwhere I was going with that was that
you as the as the face ifyou will have the franchise the visible person
presentative right one of seven. Youknow that you you you do absorb a
little bit of the brunt of anykind of complaint. You also are the
(45:08):
one who is a recipient of someof the accolades as well. And we
talked about this in the last episode, that the staff is largely responsible for
the actual work that gets done.And again counsel can provide guidance and can
provide the direction, but the staffstill needs to execute on that. You
add that to the fact that thedevelopers who come in and get the approval
(45:31):
and then that they need to goto their shareholders or their investors and then
they need to get that So there'sa lot of complexity to that. It's
it's a lot of moving parts.It's not a simple matter, and I
do think that there are opportunities tohold people a little bit more accountable in
that process. I do feel againmy opinion that that has gotten better that
(45:55):
that that it has improved in thetime that I've been in Landers. I've
been here almost six years, soI've seen an improvement in that. And
that's a growth thing, because againyou're dealing with a city that was,
you know, relatively small in thein the scheme of things, that just
exploded. It's still experiencing explosive growth. Slowed down a little bit from a
(46:15):
couple of years ago, but it'sstill one of the fastest growing cities in
the nation. And even saying hereis there's not a lot of restaurants in
Leander, and I've seen it myself, but you've been part of economic development,
so you know that there are quitea few things coming. So that's
great news. We're getting a Cava, I think the mayor said, we're
(46:36):
going to get a Dutch Brothers.There's torches on the east side of town.
Yeah, so there's restaurants coming,and so it's going to help not
just with the growth of the city. But we talked about this last time.
We want to keep our children hereto be able, but how can
they live here if it's not affordable. We want them to be able to
(46:58):
work and live here. Now weunderstand people go off to college, but
we want to have these these restaurantsso people can have teenage employment right right.
We want to be able to fuelthat part of our econa. Absolutely,
and again a really really good pointthat I think people would overlook generally
speaking. Again, the conversation islike, well, I remember, why
(47:20):
don't we have a Whataburger in Leander? And I'm like, that is not
to me personally, It's not asignpost. Okay, that's something that's going
to happen. And you know,if what a Burger does a you know,
a market study and they decide that, hey, here's where I need
to put that particular restaurant, that'sgoing to happen. I think that holds
true for a lot of the otherthings that we mentioned from that perspective,
(47:43):
and we're getting a home depot,but people don't think about the underlying employment
piece of that. That's where I'mgoing with that. Like, you made
a very good mention there, andI think you know, the kids that
are that are working at whataburger ordairy queen or you know, the coffee
place or whatever. Those are kidsthat would not have opportunity to have those
jobs in the city that they livein. Right. Look, it's not
(48:04):
just about those kids too, rightwhen I'm talking about teenager, but there's
other In America, absolutely, wehave this side gig mentality unfortunately, because
people are not able to live onthe income that they have from their primary
job. So we have a kindof side gig, you know, whether
you're delivering for favor, delivering DoorDash, or working a second job, or
you're going to have more jobs aroundhere, even just you know, again
(48:25):
stay at home mom who you know, wants a little bit of a break,
for lack of better terms, fromyou know, the kids, Like,
Hey, I'm going to work apart time job. I'm gonna pick
up six hours, eight hours,ten hours doing x y Z whatever that
x y Z is. I thinkthose are all things that a lot of
people overlook when you are talking aboutthis overall holistic machine that is being kind
(48:49):
of built as as we go.I think we do a better job of
planning out which lego pieces we're adding, you know, I think one thing
is that we really need primary employersand Leander, something like Samsung we couldn't
do because of their water needs andTailor's probably going to struggle with water.
But we need primary employers. Weneed those big companies coming. But at
(49:13):
the end of the day, they'regoing to look at how's the city functioning,
how's the development process. Does thecity council get along, And unfortunately
the answer was no. Recently onthat we made huge strides on that.
But companies do look for that thing. They look for those things. They
look to see if we're inclusive becausethey want their employees to live here.
(49:35):
They also are looking at housing,so they're looking at housing and like something
with the knife manufacture which I talkedabout that fell through, right, but
they were looking at housing for theiremployees. People want to live and work
here and we can't do that unlesswe have primary employers and we need that
commercial We need that development to fundour projects as well. Yeah. Now,
(49:57):
again it's a diversification of the taxspace. We talked about this in
the last episode too, that youknow, the conversations of you know,
how the feel and the small townand all that stuff, those are great
and I don't want to discount thatbecause there is there is a feeling that
you want to get from your home. I mean, I think, well,
(50:21):
Leander has a character. I mean, we're right across from old Town
and that's uniquely that small town feel. But as we go into a big
city, how was that going toHow can we keep that small town feel?
Sure you will, sure, AndI think it's important that you're emphasizing
feel because you can have the feelof a small town, but you can't
approach a larger city with a smalltown mentality. And I think we've seen
(50:44):
some changes that I think are positivefrom that perspective. I think they would
have happened anyway, but it's niceto have had, you know, for
the last few years a council thatwas at least looking at this and saying,
Okay, you know, how dowe solve for these these the these
issues in a way that it's conduciveto the long term growth of the city.
Kind of take me back to thatthing I said earlier. The city
(51:07):
keeps going like you know, youand I it's a little piece of influence
will be there for a few yearsand then someone else will step into that
role. And that's that and that'sgreat, and that's what volunteerism is about.
Sure, it's about leaving it.I'd said this to Christine because we
talked about, you know, theEconomic Development Committee. My job as the
(51:27):
chair of that committee was to leaveit better than how I found it,
and I hopefully did that. Youknow, time will tell, hopefully everyone
in the right mindset. I meanthat's what you should do. I mean
again, this civic minded and thiskind of we can call it political,
but it is. It's a civisit's an exercise in civics. The political
aspect I think complicates it. Butthe exercise in civics is you're interested,
(51:51):
you're engaged, and you want tomake sure that you leave it better than
wherein you found it, and notsaying that it was terrible when you found
it, just you can be betterand you can always improve. That's a
problem that sometimes people think, Idon't want to be a large city.
Well that has that has beyond ourship ship sailed and can we keep that
small town feel? Yes, yes, I think we can. But at
(52:13):
the same time, you have tobe planning for the future. If if
our past city councils had planned correctly, we probably wouldn't be in the water
situation they were in unfortunately, Andwe've been doing this. Council has been
doing a good job of pushing thoseprojects forward for water to ensure that when
we do have that population in twentytwenty seven, we're able to meet their
(52:34):
water needs right, right, andagain that's the plan. There are a
series of uncontrollable things around that too. You know, stops raining for five
years, so then what are yougonna do, right, We're gonna run
out of water. But the pipelinerepairs were part of planned activity, right.
We just are trying to express thatto our residents. We know it's
painful for no outdoor watering for sixweeks and that's coming up, but we
(52:59):
need to do that to do thosepipeline repairs. Sure, sure, I
mean it is. It's with aneye to the future. And with that
eye to the future, I knowyou yesterday kicked off your campaign. So
if you want to tell folks howto find you, like what where where
would they go? You can We'reright here, so you can just Oh,
okay, I think I've been lookingat the wrong camera. So I
(53:22):
had my kickoff campaign yesterday or mycampaign kickoff. Excuse my I still have
a head cold. So esmey forLeander is my website, so you can
go to wwwsmefurlander dot com. Mymy website is in Spanish as well and
learn more about me. My sonedited my website, so I do need
(53:43):
to go add more pictures and talkabout things, but I do have what
I've been focused on and what I'mgoing to focus on in the upcoming years.
So you can go to esmefur Leanderdot com request a sign you can
email me and donations are needed andrequired to run a campaign. It's pretty
(54:04):
expensive and everything else has gone upin price in three years. But look,
I hate asking people for money,but it's necessary evil to run a
campaign. And so well, thankyou very much. I appreciate you taking
the time to meet with me heretoday. I wish you, as I
do all the candidates, nothing butsuccess and luck going forward. And I
(54:24):
certainly hope that those of you whoare listening and watching can appreciate some of
the approach that we're taking here togive you a little bit of a different
view of some of the people whoare the movers and shakers in Leanda.
Thank you Andrew. I mean thisis beneficial so everyone in the community can
see just what the city council candidatesare, what's their mindset if you will.
(54:45):
Yep, No, that's what I'mhoping for. No, no,
thank you for being here. Icouldn't do it without you. I could
sit here and talk about all thatstuff and I have no one to talk
to. So thanks. But again, I appreciate the time. Thank you
so very very much, and thankyou for having this at a local business.
And I actually support this business,Fifth Element. Yeah, no,
for sure, a little commercial there. Yeah, Mike, Mike Brune has
(55:06):
been just extremely kind in allowing usto be here and do this here at
Fifth Element. It makes it alot easier when we have one place to
go. The camera setups can stayconsistent. I don't have to worry about
lighting. The lot goes into that. But yeah, Mike, thanks a
lot, and we still have towork on them. Come grab a beer
at Element in a great place.The owners are super great and I support
(55:28):
local businesses. And my husband Brucebeer at home, so he likes Bear,
so we do come here. Yeah. Like I said, it's really
close to my house, so Ido tend to be here myself for only
again maybe a little too Thanks againfor your time, no, I appreciate
it, and hopefully this has beenhelpful to you as a voter. Again.
You can go to vote in Leanderdot com and registered to vote if
(55:50):
you haven't already registered, as wellas find additional links and information on upcoming
elections and the city races as well. I'll be updating the webs i'd here
shortly as soon as all the candidatesare official. Then I'll go ahead and
put that information there for you aswell. But you know where to find
as me, and you know whereto find me, So we'll see you
next time. And I hope thatyou've enjoyed today's episode. Thanks a lot
(56:12):
of folks, all right, andwe're done
I recently had the opportunity to sitdown with Esmeralda Matki Longoria, who is
the current occupant of Place two onCity Council and recently announced her intent to
run for reelection. I invite youto join our conversation. This is Lean
and Leander. So I'm back hereat Fifth Element and we're doing the second
(00:36):
interview in the Voting Leander series fortwenty twenty four and I'm here with Asmi
Matki Longoria, right. Yes,is that the Well, my official name
is Esmeralda Maki Longoria, but somecity council they did abbreviate it because it
is a long name. So Iwant to admit that that was my fault
(00:57):
because I had practiced that in myhead and I forgot because I'm used to
calling you as me. That's thething is. It's funny. It's funny
because it's almost full circle because thelast time we sat down and you and
I sat down, when you initiallyran, yes, I was very conscious
about making sure I pronounced your namecorrectly, and I was very much as
(01:18):
Malda. But now I'm like,oh, you're as me. I don't
even think of it that way anymore. Is that some people have problems saying
Asmeralda and some people have problems sayingas me, so strangely, as Maeralda
is easier for some people. Reallygo with that, okay, all right,
And I did have a name change. I did get married and wanted
to address that. So yep,no, I have life. And then
(01:40):
you're jumping ahead, You're getting you'regetting my questions out before I even ask
them. No anyway, So no, And just for the record, as
me and I after her run,we've kind of had several opportunities to work
with each other, most recently onthe Economic Development Committee, which I mentioned
the last episode. You were,I think towards the last year that I
(02:05):
was on that particular committee, youwere the council representatives. So you and
I have had several opportunities to talk. I don't want anybody to think that
you know, there's anything beyond justthat familiarity. We know each other from
that perspective, and I try tostay as as neutral for the conversations that
we have because what I want isthat anyone who's watching or listening to the
to the episode gets a sense ofwho you are, and that's really more
(02:30):
important for me than any of theother things. And because you're an incumbent,
we will talk about a few thelittle other things. But outside of
that, I want to just makesure that people know who you are,
where you come from, how yougot here, that type of thing.
So, and thank you for yourservice on economic development. We really rely
on volunteers from the community to getinvolved in boards and commissions. So thank
(02:51):
you for your service. Yeah,no, sure, it was. It
was. It was pleasurable while Idid it. I was a little little
disappointing that I didn't get you know, it didn't get re up, but
you know, hey it is.Everybody's got to get a chance to get
and get in there and get theirvoice heard. So I'm all for that.
Thank you for carrying it. Yeah. No, I didn't want to
do that either, but hey,there you go. So, yeah,
it was a good experience. Idid get a lot out of it,
(03:12):
and it's kind of helped me beable to kind of from my perspective as
a citizen, kind of get aperspective on what's actually happening within the city
as far as of planning. Fromthe economic development perspective, it's really nice
to have had that visibility into things, and I definitely encourage anybody who would
want to be on that type ofcommittee or even just interested in seeing what
the committee does. Their meetings arequarterly now, and so if you're interested
(03:37):
in that, show up to oneof the meetings. And just I had
people pop in all the time.It was always interesting. But anyway,
so from that perspective, again,you're raised in Texas, right, I
remember it was Laredo, right,Corpus Christy. I know that was a
terrible thing to say to someone fromCorporus Christy. Okay, it was Corpus
(03:58):
Christy. Your family had some ranchlandout there, right, I remember some
of those conversations from the last time. So why don't you give our listeners
a little bit of a taste ofwhere you came from. I'm a native
Texan. My family was in Texassince Texas was formed as part of a
state, and so my family's beenhere quite a long time. We did
have and we do have ranch landstill in South Texas, which is even
(04:23):
further from Corpus Christie. So grewup in Corpus Christi. I'm one of
four girls, three sisters, lotsof cousins, big family, and I
feel like everyone's related to me.Don't have a lot of family left in
Corpus Christy anymore, but my mommy parents live in San Antonio. So
(04:44):
you were one of the things wetalked about the last time, because you
were a new candidate the last timeyou and I sat down kind of at
the at that point in time,I was still pretty new in Leander as
well, so I was kind ofgetting to know a lot of people.
But what I've learned since then isthat you know, there there's a group
of people that you can kind of, for lack of better terms, count
on being somewhere involved making their voiceheard. And you quickly became part of
(05:08):
that group. In my opinion,I mean, just it's me watching and
like, hey, so you werepretty vocal on a number of things,
and I know that you are verycommunity oriented from that perspective. So what
have been some of the things thatyou have learned as you've served on council
over the last three years. Soone thing is I live on the east
(05:30):
side of Leander, so I'm inthe east most neighborhood in Leander. So
one thing that kind of helps meis to talk to people who live on
kind of central Leander where we are, or even west, just some of
the pain points with the train andthe timing and that kind of thing that
I don't see because I'm on theeast side. So my position is at
large, and I just want topeople to know that, right, so
(05:54):
I serve all the citizens of Leander. I cannot pick and choose. So
when you're asking about what things I'velearned, I would say, there's a
lot. You have to come prepared. I was a new person last time,
and now I have almost three yearsexperience, and it's a lot of
information. It's not just coming prepared, but there were so many things that
(06:15):
were happening. Were a growing city, one of the fastest scrooring cities in
America, and we have water infrastructureissues and those you know, to quote
a resident in the city, theysaid, we really don't have time for
on the job training with new people, because I at least have that experience
with water and being able to justprepare, I mean, the challenges of
(06:36):
the city. It's actually more thanjust water, right, all the things
that the boards and commissions, howthe city operates, city staff. So
I had a learning curve and itwas pretty steep. And three years later,
I feel pretty confident of my workon city Council and preparing for meetings.
And it's not just city council twotimes a week for a volunteer position,
(07:00):
also on some other commissions, andwe can talk about that later,
but I want to talk about whatare those accomplishments and where I represent Leander.
Okay, I think that's fair,and represent Leander is part of the
way that I like to make sureand frame the positions. It's a little
(07:21):
bit of an easier conversation when you'retalking to the mayor because people just assume,
oh, the mayor is the mayorof the city, right, But
when you start to talk about theindividual council members, there's not nearly as
much clarity, even though, asyou mentioned, it is at large.
Okay, so you are representing theentire thirty nine square miles, right.
(07:41):
I think it is so from thatperspective, but you bring to your point,
you bring a certain perspective. Again, you are a citizen and a
homeowner on the east side of thecity, and the day to day is
a little bit different there than itwould be necessarily over here on the west
side. It's not much space Okay, it's again it's not a huge giant
(08:05):
town, but I always find thatvery striking because I live over here.
I live closer to Fifth Element,which is maybe not such a great thing
all the time, but it's different. Like just the day to day pace
and feel of living here in Leanderis a little bit different over here.
So when I drive over to likebar w and I'm over there on the
(08:28):
furthermost east side and kind of seeingwhat's going on there, it just it's
different. It just feels different.This is a little bit older, a
little bit more established as far assome of the you know, I don't
know features, and and you know, you spend a little bit more time
in old Leander per se and thennecessarily in the newer parts. So again,
(08:50):
the other part of that is that, of course is as a council
member, it is a volunteer position. There's no advalorum or anything like that.
You guys are doing this because thisis how you volunteer your time.
You just had go through the processof letting people pick you to volunteer your
time. Right. So I'm happyto say I'm really proud that I've missed
one regular city council meeting in almostthree years. So I'm dedicated and a
(09:13):
lot of times I won't fault someof my fellow city council members from other
cities, but they're saying, hey, we don't get paid, so maybe
some people may not put in theeffort. I'm not calling out anyone's names,
but that's not me. I'm thetype of person that is dependable,
hard working. I'm going to putin the effort, proud to say I've
only missed one regular city council meeting, and I come prepared and it's it's
(09:39):
a lot of work, it is, and I'm glad you've brought that up,
because, again from the perspective ofwhat the accomplishments are. From a
council member's perspective, again, councilis charged with some principal folk us Number
(10:01):
one being the budget, Number twobeing the various rules and regulations for lack
of better terms that the city runswith. And then number three and probably
not in order, but number threewould be giving guidance to the staff and
understanding the particulars of the operation ofthe city. So when you started,
(10:22):
like when you and I first hada conversation, one of the things that
you mentioned in our interview a coupleof years ago, was as a newbie
coming on, you were a littlebit concerned about housing and the affordability of
housing and the availability of housing.So let's look at that from a perspective
of like a marker. So youcame to council with feeling it's one of
(10:46):
the things that I would say andcorrect me if I'm wrong on one of
the motivators that you said, Ihave to get involved, right, that
was one of the things. Sousing that as your marker, do you
feel that in the ensuing years there'sbeen an improvement in that particular area,
and if so, how do youfeel that your participation, your peace helped
(11:09):
with that. Definitely, I thinkthat housing is still a challenge. The
city council gets kind of blamed alot of times for building apartments, and
some of those were approved before Iwas on city council, so they're just
long time coming. As with everythingin America, everything has gone up in
price everything. That means it takeslonger for our developers to build some of
(11:33):
these apartments, so they weren't necessarilyapproved. Under me, I would say
that this council is mindful of growingcommercial. That has been our focus,
so commercial, and we still getdinged a little bit from that perspective because
residents say, oh, but waterand apartments and commercial, But we do
need to expand our tax space tobe able to provide for those water infrastructure
(11:58):
projects that take a lot of moneyand are needed as we grow the city
to possibly one hundred and seventy fivethousand to two hundred thousand, right,
and what does that look like?Right? Right? And it's a really
good point from that perspective because again, those those key issues don't necessarily change
(12:18):
in that short period of time.I mean, you know, part of
what you ran for, if Iremember correctly, was you know, adding
some additional voices to the mix.I think you were concerned at the time
that not enough representation was was onthe council at that particular time. Again
(12:41):
we're talking about three years ago.But listen, one of the reasons I
ran was government transparency. At thetime that I was running, one thing
that really bothered me as a residentwas that residents could not do public comments.
That was really at the highest partof my list. And I've im
packed a change. So and whenI say I I'm one of seven right,
(13:03):
So I can only do that withworking well with others. But as
far as government transparency, we wereable to bring back public comments, bring
back the library rentals and those thosethings that people ask for. That said,
you know, that is not right. We really want to be able
to express ourselves in public comments.And I believe in the Constitution and people's
(13:24):
right to express themselves, freedom ofspeech. And excuse my voice. I
have allergies, That's all right,no worries, I know, but no
one will tell you. Just wantjust on the record now, because I
always boast I never have allergies.Okay, are here, We are all
right. So, yeah, youhit on a couple of things there that
I think that that are important,and I would tend to agree with you
(13:48):
from the perspective of you know,there there were some limitations as to what
you could do as just a generalcitizen in Leander, and I don't want
to say that that is dramatically changed, because there's been changes for the positive,
but I still think there are naturalimpediments, natural barriers to that that
(14:15):
are no fault of anybody. Okay, you know, you have a city
that goes from twenty thirty thousand peopleto eighty thousand people literally almost overnight,
you're going to have growing pains,and that's one of the growing pains.
I've applaud the council in this pastterm because they've started to address some of
those things, and some of theway that they're addressing it is very visible
and very transparent. Is it onehundred percent there in my opinion, No,
(14:41):
but you can see the changes arebeing made. So I think that's
that bodes well for the city asin a long term. I can't remember
who it was, but I wasin one of the committee meetings. We
had a guest speaker and one ofthe things that he mentioned was when you
(15:01):
are in public service, you're onlythere for a short period of time.
The city keeps going like the citynever stops. That goes on and on
and on and on and on.So whatever you do in that one little
period of time that you're there,it could have some impact, you know,
five ten years down the road.But again, eventually something else is
going to replace that. Something elseis going to be part of that conversation.
(15:22):
And for us here in Leander,again you hit on a couple of
the main things. So from thatperspective. I think that's kudos because I
think the council has done a goodjob, and I know that you're one
of the voices in that. Areyou there yet? And I will just
say that when I ran last time, I was by just a normal citizen.
(15:43):
Yes, I was involved in thecommunity as much as I could be,
but I started noticing what the citycouncil was doing, and then then
I wanted to get involved. SoI applaud people who want to get involved
and who do put themselves out therefor running. And it's it's not easy
and to be as transparent as possible, but there are a lot of rules
around open meetings and what we're ableto do. Sure, and so yeah,
(16:06):
no, and again you're hitting onsome things that are like that's experience
that tells you that because I can, I can reflect the exact same thing.
All right. I'm not even oncouncil, all right, but with
any of the involvement I've had incommittees. As the city has matured in
an understanding of how things are supposedto be done, they've also kind of
(16:33):
emphasized some of the things that arenecessary to do it right. So you
mentioned open meetings laws, and thingsof that nature. Those are pretty restricting.
At the end of the day,it's nobody's fault. It's legislature.
That's just how the legislature has chosento do it whenever they chose to do
it. A good example of somethingthat was done several years ago that's now
like here the ramifications of this decisionwe make many years ago. But it
(16:56):
does restrict what you can say,how you can say it, and how
often. And you can necessarily havean open conversation about something because there are
some legal limitations. That said,again, I think the city does a
better job of representing what they do. I want to pivot a little bit
there because one of the things thatI know you've had some experience with now
(17:18):
was something that actually I became awareof probably a few years ago, more
like municipal leagues and things of thatnature. And I think CAPCOG is one
of those. And I believe thatyou're participating on that now, right.
Is that as a city representative oris that you independently saying Hey, I'm
going to do this as a cityrepresentative. So I am on the executive
(17:41):
committee for CAPCOG, and CAPCOG isa capital Area Council of Governments and for
their regions. Specifically, they supportten counties. So I think most people
and most of your listeners know thatLander falls and two counties, Travis and
Williamson County, so two of ourcounties are in the CAPCOG ten County.
So what CAPCOG does is regional planning, and they addressed solid waste, law
(18:07):
enforcement training, clean air, andI'm part of the clean Air coalition.
They also do area aging, sothe meals on wheels, everything that's funded
approved for this ten county region goesthrough CAPCOG nine one one fees, emergency
communications. How we take our nineto one one calls. So how I
(18:33):
got involved in this is, youknow, the mayor when I first joined
council, Becky was asked to docap Metro and I would have done that
one too, or there was waterand I think Nicole picked that one and
I really wanted to get involved withCAPCOG. So I have experience with government.
I was a state employee. Iworked with some of these state agencies
(18:56):
Texas Department of Human Services helping humanservice and all those state agencies work with
CAPCOG, and so I am arepresentative on the Executive Committee. I'm also
on the General Assembly, and MayorDelisle and Council Member Thompson are also on
the General Assembly. So the GeneralAssembly is just a larger group and it's
(19:18):
various city council members. It's alsocounty commissioners, so people have different roles.
And then I'm on the Executive Committee, which is comprised of judges,
county commissioners, city council members,and I represent large cities I believe,
over twenty five thousand, but there'sonly so many spots for different cities representing.
(19:44):
We have Flugerville on there and roundRock, but not every city around
here is represented there, just becausethere is only so many slots per population.
So I'm also on the clean Airand clean air is important to me,
so we approve for devices in thecounty in that town county region that
(20:06):
is monitors air quality. There's alot to air quality, right, No,
I would imagine I mean that that. So what that makes me want
to ask, is that, Okay, so there's some there's some additional time
commitments to something like that. Soyou know, when you're when you're running
(20:29):
for council again, you you you'reessentially saying, hey, I want to
volunteer here. But because of theway that that particular volunteer position is constructed,
you have to be the person thatpeople elect to that position. But
it is essentially a volunteer position.I mean, there's no way about it
otherwise. That's what it is.So you're making a commitment to it's biweekly
(20:53):
council meetings, right, So twicea month you're you're prepping for council meetings,
and we do have some than twicea bit. There are special meetings
I've seen that, I've seen that. Okay. You also had, for
instance, a time commitment to theEconomic and Development Committee because you would show
up to our monthly meetings. Andthen you're doing CAPCOG on top of that,
(21:17):
which how often that does say?Executive committee meets once a month?
Okay, Then clean Air meets quarterlyI believe, And I'm also the council
liaison for area Aging and I believethat's quarterly that they meet as well.
Okay. But it is a timecommitment, and it is driving to South
Austin, and because the ten countyarea, it is widespread, right So
(21:38):
okay, So these are all thesecommitments that if I were to say,
hey, as mey, did youknow about that before you ran? What
would you say? I would say, no, okay, I yeah,
I didn't know how much time wasneeded. And so now after almost three
(21:59):
years, I know it takes abit huge commitment. So I applaud anyone
who puts themselves out there who whomay not know. But it is a
lot of time involved. It's notjust going to those two hour meetings.
It's preparing for those two hours.Wait too, sorry, they're not two
hours twice twice a month. Yeah, twice a month for council. You're
preparing for monthly meetings on the exact, preparing for quarterly meetings on a couple
(22:22):
of the other things that you doare no regular city council meetings usually run
from six to ten. So fora volunteer position, we're if you're lucky
if it ends at ten. Yeah. I've seen several of those go over.
But so yeah, again it's abig time commitment. But you have
a regular job, like you oryou know, I think you're still dell
right. No, I'm currently lookingfor my next employment, unemployed but still
(22:48):
going to be in the IT field. And one thing that is valuable for
your listeners to and watchers to knowis that what I do for a living
is very much like city planning.So I am a project manager, program
manager, business architect. So usuallywhen people ask, well, what does
a business architect do, I wouldapprove projects in a portfolio for multimillion dollar
(23:10):
companies. From an IT perspective,it projects. But how that relates to
city is it's very much approving thebudget, approving which projects we do,
making sure that we are managing thosetimelines now day to day. I won't
manage city staff, and I willI think most people know, but we
do not. We cannot tell citystaff what to do, so we go
(23:34):
everything goes through a city manager becausethat's just the way of our type government.
But we need to make sure.I need to be prepared to ask
those questions on timeline expectations. Youknow, are we meeting those timelines?
Because my brain this is a projectmanager and my kids, I mean,
I'm a mom too. I gota project managed kids, right, Have
(23:57):
you done your task? Yeah?No, I get it, and I
now more so than a few yearsago. Because I've always been personally,
I've always been in sales related rolesthroughout my career, and there's a modicum
of planning in that, but it'sreally more methodology than it is necessarily planning.
(24:19):
However, I too have kind ofpivoted a little bit in my career
and I've been doing essentially project managementfor the last few years, which gives
me a better understanding of, Okay, what are the complexities of what it
is that you're trying anything that you'retrying to do again, And just to
say that, one of the reasonsI ran as well is because I saw
(24:42):
these projects not being delivered. We'retalking the Senior Center was voted on by
bonds, by our residents, andjust was being installed, frankly by previous
councils. So as a project manager, I want to make sure let's push
those projects that make financial sense.I'm not saying let's approve all projects.
(25:03):
I'm saying, let's evaluate them andsee if we spend money for the senior
center. It was a no brainer. Somebody had donated land, Let's get
that built. The longer we delay, and unfortunately previous councils had delayed that,
and now here we are that everything'smore expensive in America, as I
said, right, So now wedon't have enough for the Senior Center and
(25:26):
it's out forbid right now. Sowe're making progress on these project completions,
I would say, and just beingable to push those projects through that makes
sense to push through if you will, right, So project management speak from
that perspective, address the backlog,right, yes, yeah, and it's
if it doesn't make sense, thenmove it back to the backlog and let's
(25:51):
work on things that we have activefunding for. Let's be creative and what
we're able to do. I mean, are we able to get grants that
are going to help us and we'vebeen able to do that. A lot
of people don't know this with capMetro. I know, it was kind
of a heated discussion, pretty dividedwith our city on voting for cap Metro,
but people are not aware that withour interlocal agreement, cap Metro is
(26:12):
giving back one point six million dollarsin projects around here that are related to
transportation. So we're trying to becreative and work smarter with the money that
we have, and I think that'salways it's easy to sit outside of that
equation and say, well, whycan't we just do it this way,
(26:33):
or why don't we just get outof this and let's take the money from
over here. But the reality ofthat is that it's much much more complex
and much much more convoluted then mostpeople will take the time to understand.
And again, I like having thesethe ability to have these conversations. It's
(26:55):
one of the nice things about beingin a community that's not you know,
five million people in that you know, my efforts can grant me an opportunity
to sit down with someone like yourselfor someone like the mayor or any of
the candidates who who will want todo this. Again, it's not as
a perspective of like, well,how qualified are you to do this,
(27:18):
although there is an aspect of that. I think it's fair to ask those
questions, but it's also like doyou understand what it is that you are
going to need to do? Whichfor me and again for my listeners,
this is the nice thing about beingable to come back to someone like yourself,
who I've interviewed previously, and youwere the shy girl who was running
for council and it was like itwas like pulling teeth. It was like
(27:42):
it was one of the hardest thingsI've ever done, and you were very
nervous, and that's totally understandable.But again, with time, you kind
of you're more comfortable. It's veryobvious to me that you're much more comfortable
in what it is that you're doing. And I love being on city coun
I can tell, I can tell, and I mean honestly. I mean
that in the most sincere way,because when I look at council members and
(28:03):
I can't say that I would,you know, rank them. That's not
fair. But what I look foris how representative are you? How often
do I see you at the things? Okay, and I was looking over
your new website for reelection, andyou have a bunch of pictures on there
about things that you've done, andI've been to a lot of those.
I remember seeing you at those things. So the community outreach aspect of being
(28:27):
a representative, I think is critical. We didn't even talk about that and
how much we have. That's again, that's why I'm bringing it up,
because on top of all those otherthings that we kind of delineated for time
consumption, you have to do,not have to, but I think it's
important that you do these other thingstoo, you know, show up to
the parade, show up to theopenings. I don't think it's reasonable for
(28:49):
us as citizens to ask volunteers tobe at everything. So the expectation possible,
it's impossible. There's too many.I have to say that most and
cuttings happen at three or four pm, and so I support the chamber,
love them, but I'm not ableto go because I work full time,
so a lot of the council commitmentsare during eight to five work hours.
(29:14):
So it definitely is kind of gearedtowards somebody who is doesn't have a full
time job. Like I said rightnow, I don't have a full time
job, so I can go tomore of those events. But I feel
like I have still managed to jugglethat career, being a mom, being
a city council member. It iswork life balance, right, sure,
No, absolutely, And again Ithink the emphasis in this particular interview has
(29:34):
been that time commitment because each councilthere's seven council members in total or at
six open six at large. Positionsin the mayor and the mayor always kind
of separate a little bit because there'ssome leadership aspect to that role that you're
more senior project manager if anything.Okay, so you're kind of like,
(29:55):
all right, what are we doing? But all the other council members should
be you know, in my opinion, this is me speaking. I'm not
speaking for anybody, nor is thisa representative of your view. But you
know, there's an expectation that asa representative, A, I should be
able to talk to you, likeI should be able to reach out to
you. I should be able toget some opportunity to at least express myself.
(30:15):
And that b that that is somethingI hear, that's something I see
when I'm looking at those representatives,and I think that's important for people to
consider. Again, it's it's fairto say there's an aspect of a popularity
contest and these types of things.Okay, name recognition, visibility is all
(30:37):
part of that. I'm not oneto, you know, be so naive
to the process to not actually recognizeHey, that's part of the process.
And look, it's our job asrepresentatives for the city to listen to all
residents in the city. I maynot agree with them, they may not
agree with me. They just maynot like me for whatever reason. I
(30:57):
can't change that. But I'm hereto listen. And that's why we restore
public comments. And I do enjoywhen people do engage in civic behavior and
come to our city council meetings.And so before you're throwing darts or being
couch potato, I forget the footballrecordare quarter arm share quarterback gun. It's
(31:18):
easier to throw darts at what wedo without knowing all the information. And
I get that. I was oneof those people who threw darts and said,
you know what, I think Ican do better. And if that
city council had been doing what Ithought was their job, I wouldn't have
ran. If you would have askedme ten years ago, and I might
have said this last time, Iwould not have predicted I would run.
(31:41):
I'm an introvert by nature. Ithink you need those diverse people on city
councils. If you have a sevenpanel with all extroverts, things might not
get done. I'm not saying extrovertsdon't, because they clearly have project management
skills. But what I'm saying isI'm going to lean into being an extrovert.
Introvert and my husband will say I'man extrovert because I talk too much,
(32:04):
but it really is dependent on whoI'm talking to. Absolutely. I
like to be quiet on city councilmeetings and ask relevant questions. I'm not
there just to talk to talk.I'm there to bring up a question that
I think a resident in the citywould ask. And you're right, it's
easy to throw darts, but theydon't have how the sausage is made,
(32:25):
and that is difficult, and thatcomes with experience, in three years of
experience, and I feel like Ihave that no. No, I would
say yes to all of the above, because again, I have the perspective
of somebody who has watched that progressfor you as a council member from three
years ago when you were running tonow. And again we've had the opportunity
(32:47):
and again all disclaimers, we've hadthe opportunity to interact on a number of
conversation points as well as potential projectsfor the city. And it's always something
that I've struck I've been struck withwhen talking to you, is that you
and this is not meant to bea bad thing, this is a good
thing. You don't answer right away, You don't you have a tendency to
(33:10):
like let me find out about that. It's one of those things and I'm
like, you know, At first, I was like, wait, I
speak, No, see I'm clearlyinterrupting, So it's fine. No.
Again, we know each other,so it's okay. But no. From
that perspective, I think it's somethingthat brings a very unique approach to some
(33:31):
of the conversations that need to takeplace on council. You're you're you don't
come in with an opinion. Ithink it's fair. I don't know if
you you may have you may beformulating an opinion, you may be formulating
an idea, but you're not overtin driving that as a cause. You
know, you're not You're not bangingthe gavel right away. You're you're waiting
(33:52):
to hear what other people have tosay about something before you're actually speaking in
a representative And I think that's importantwhen I'm talking about people coming to City
Council because a lot of people doactually watch online. So thank you for
watching online if you do. ButI think it's important to go there and
speak, and you get three minutesto speak, so I do like to
(34:12):
listen to both sides. So wehave quite a few neighborhood issues where we
had to close one seventy seven.That road is really treacherous, and we
listened to the neighbors and as acouncil, we came together. And I
would say over the past year totwo this council has been unanimous on a
lot of decisions, and so thatshows me that we work together. But
what I would ask the public iscome to our city council meetings, get
(34:35):
your voice heard, and go infront of city council. And it can
be a little intimidating to be infront of seven people who are sitting above
you. I kind of wish wewere at the same level as people.
But yeah, the dayas can bea little intimidating. I'll the cop to
that. I've I've spoken in frontof council a couple of times, and
in certain instances I'm fine, butthere's been I think at least one topic.
(34:57):
I can't remember what it was specifically, but I got real nervous.
I can't. I do not understandthat to this day, because obviously not
the kind of guy who gets reallynervous. It was funny. It's it's
funny how that and I started toput people at ease when they're up there.
I try to smile at them andlook I may not agree with every
resident in the city, and Ibet you I don't. But if there's
(35:17):
a neighborhood issued like the closing oneseventy seven, we listened to the neighbors
and came to that decision. SoI do like to have that point of
view of come to city council andtell us what is bothering you. If
not, we're not going to know, send us an email. We do
read our emails, and our emailsare public records, so people can look
at our emails. Do public request, open records request, And so I
(35:43):
encourage people to get involved and tobe able to tell us what they want.
Because if I see something that's ona neighborhood, I won't and nobody's
saying anything about it, I'm goingto think that everything's great and there's no
issue. But if people come tocity council, they can get their view
heard. And I think that's reallya nonpartisan thing. I mean that is
we make decisions listening to the community. Yeah, And it's a good point
(36:07):
because again, local decision making localpolitics is not the same thing, nor
should it be conflated with some ofthe larger political conversations that take place Unfortunately
that happens. It's just part ofI think the culture here in the United
(36:27):
States. It's just it's it's acultural thing for a group a group of
people, like not everybody. There'sa there's a there's a culture here that
there's a whole lot of people whojust don't care and just go about their
daily business. There's a culture thatpeople make assumptions about politicians. Right at
the end of the day, I'ma politician, So people can make decisions
about that without knowing as me andthe person right, So you're right,
(36:52):
it's a little divided, but atthe end of the day, local politics
should not be partisan. Local politicsis fixing stop lights, and I'm happy
to say that that's one thing Iran onto fixing these uncompleted projects. We
were able to install two lights atSunny and Baghdad and Ronald Reagan and here
Away and really public safety is importantto me. CAPCOG is very much more
(37:16):
on the safety side of things,and that's why I wanted to get involved
in things like CAPCOG because I havethat government experience and it is a non
part is an environment and it's itwas a passion for mine to learn more
about those items that CAPCOG does well, and again it to me it underscores
(37:37):
a willingness and a desire to understandthe complexities of the issues, a lot
of the issues. In my mind, I try to be here in the
podcast and then and when I havejust general conversations and you know, it's
really more, well, what's weneed to zoom out a little bit,
(37:58):
right, Okay, we need tolook at it, like, right,
what's the overall influencers in this oneparticular issue and how much can we necessarily
do about it? Can only controlthe controllables, right, You can only
control what it is that's actually withinyour purview to control everything outside of that.
Well, that brings a good pointbecause the state legislature has really passed
(38:21):
a lot of laws where we cannotintervene in certain cases. So at the
city level, our hands are tiedto do some things, and so we
try to be transparent when people cometo city council saying we can't block this
from being developed because it's already beenapproved and we can't. It's just the
way the state government has limited cities'rights, and we do get involved in
(38:44):
that too, to see what arethose changes that are going on at the
state legislature, the legislature that's goingto impact our city. No, And
it is one of the points thatagain I think this came up when I
was talking to Christine a couple ofweeks ago, but it's it's an understanding
of some of those fundamentals as faras governance is concerned. And to me,
(39:07):
it's one of the points where Idon't applying on a whole lot,
but it is one of the opinionsthat I held and that I will be
very public about. Is like,look, your counsel is not the people
that you need to look at ifyou need to really want to make a
change, it's substantive. You needto look at your state representatives, okay,
because they're the ones that are actuallyinfluencing any legislation that's going on.
(39:30):
And you know, there's a lotin this state that happens. I mean
I remember at one point looking atthe you know, what was essentially the
state constitution and the way that Texasis done if correct me if I'm wrong,
as you might know this, butyou know, basically we amend the
constitution with every single thing that wedo. Every legislative setting is adding additional
(39:53):
complexity to the state constitution. Essentially, they're not separate laws. They all
flow back in to the constitutional purviewof the State of Texas, which I
find tremendously interesting, tremendously complex,complex, and I would argue, probably
the wrong way to do things.It just it makes things a lot harder
(40:15):
than they necessarily need to be.I think it's on purpose, that's my
opinion, but you know, hey, it is what it is. What
it is, right, And backto open meetings, that's one thing.
It's those levers that the state hasdecided we don't want the cities to do.
And some of it is for thebenefit of the residents to not being
able to have all city council memberstalk about an agenda item that's part of
(40:37):
open meetings, but some of itis a little too deprecuremental and too It
really makes it where the city cannotthe city council cannot make a decision,
and that's unfortunate, and we usuallyrelay that to our residents saying this is
a case where we cannot do itright. It is restrictive. I mean
again, I've had some experience withthat, even just on a committee.
(40:58):
It it just becomes very difficult toget anything done. Again, I think
that's by design, and maybe there'sa little bit of thought put into that
in that you don't end up witha bunch of runaway ideas. You know,
everything's kind of rained in, alittle bit sore. There's some benefit
to it from that perspective. ButI do agree that. I think,
(41:20):
yeah, it definitely has I'd saya little bit more on the minor side,
but that's just me. Okay,that's just me. But a lot
of people in the community who say, oh, why are we not doing
that development? Why has that stopped? And I think it's more of how
the sausage is made and what you'resaying. They don't have the full picture
of what the city council can affectfor change. I mean, if I
(41:44):
approve a business and then they cannotget the funding to do their project,
that's not the city council's that's right. Like I said, in America,
things have gotten a lot more expensive. People are going to the grocery store.
It's more expensive. Believe me,I unemployed. Now. I understand
it's very difficult to live. Butalso these builders, these developers, I
(42:07):
mean, if they have to builda location. Everything's just going to cost
more to do the development, todo the construction, it's going to cost
more. So I find it interestingwhen people say, well, why is
this project not done, when itreally is that business didn't do what they
were supposed to do, or ifwe gave them an incentive and they did
(42:27):
not meet their deadlines. I don'tthink that should be the city council's fault.
That really should be taking accountability frombusinesses. I support local businesses,
but there's a lot involved, right, so I think the city council gets
a lot of discord, I guessor yeah, I mean, we did
talk about We talked a little bitabout this in the last episode as well.
(42:49):
You know, the thing is thatand you're bringing up an additional aspect
to that. Again, it's acomplex conversation. The developers who have in
approved to do a project, there'sa lot of complexity that they need to
navigate as a developer outside of whatthe city is necessarily asking for. Now,
(43:12):
the city will create avenues that areaddressing larger ideas and larger needs for
the city, and they'll also preventdevelopers from just going bananas and just doing
whatever they want to do, whichI'm not saying anybody's doing that, but
there's a balance there guard right,right, it's guardrails, it's guardrails,
(43:36):
and then I know that a lotof times in conversations I've had developers will
say, hey, this is oneof the hardest places to do a project.
It's hard to do business in Leander. That's reasonable, And on that
note, we have made a lotof changes as far as streamlining the development
process, so there are positive changeson that. It's just that at the
end of the day, once they'repast a certain point and that company doesn't
(43:59):
develop, that's not the city council'sfault. That's like, why didn't you
develop? And maybe there's other hurdlesbeyond what we can control. Right,
things got more expensive, I think, like for the knife manufacturer, things
just got more expensive for them,and it was it's kind of a bad
time in America since twenty twenty totwenty twenty four, right, And hopefully
the economy improves improves, But herewe are. When you really need that
(44:22):
money to build that and you don'thave it, what are you going to
do? As far as people sayingLeander is difficult to do, I think
this City Council specifically has addressed thatover the past two years for streamlining development.
Now, we did assign ordinance,and nothing's perfect, and so you're
going to have things that do taketime and there are certain projects that need
(44:45):
more approvals on different things that areoutside of the City Council's purview. Like
you're saying right, right, Andwhere I was going with that was that
you as the as the face ifyou will have the franchise the visible person
presentative right one of seven. Youknow that you you you do absorb a
little bit of the brunt of anykind of complaint. You also are the
(45:08):
one who is a recipient of someof the accolades as well. And we
talked about this in the last episode, that the staff is largely responsible for
the actual work that gets done.And again counsel can provide guidance and can
provide the direction, but the staffstill needs to execute on that. You
add that to the fact that thedevelopers who come in and get the approval
(45:31):
and then that they need to goto their shareholders or their investors and then
they need to get that So there'sa lot of complexity to that. It's
it's a lot of moving parts.It's not a simple matter, and I
do think that there are opportunities tohold people a little bit more accountable in
that process. I do feel againmy opinion that that has gotten better that
(45:55):
that that it has improved in thetime that I've been in Landers. I've
been here almost six years, soI've seen an improvement in that. And
that's a growth thing, because againyou're dealing with a city that was,
you know, relatively small in thein the scheme of things, that just
exploded. It's still experiencing explosive growth. Slowed down a little bit from a
(46:15):
couple of years ago, but it'sstill one of the fastest growing cities in
the nation. And even saying hereis there's not a lot of restaurants in
Leander, and I've seen it myself, but you've been part of economic development,
so you know that there are quitea few things coming. So that's
great news. We're getting a Cava, I think the mayor said, we're
(46:36):
going to get a Dutch Brothers.There's torches on the east side of town.
Yeah, so there's restaurants coming,and so it's going to help not
just with the growth of the city. But we talked about this last time.
We want to keep our children hereto be able, but how can
they live here if it's not affordable. We want them to be able to
(46:58):
work and live here. Now weunderstand people go off to college, but
we want to have these these restaurantsso people can have teenage employment right right.
We want to be able to fuelthat part of our econa. Absolutely,
and again a really really good pointthat I think people would overlook generally
speaking. Again, the conversation islike, well, I remember, why
(47:20):
don't we have a Whataburger in Leander? And I'm like, that is not
to me personally, It's not asignpost. Okay, that's something that's going
to happen. And you know,if what a Burger does a you know,
a market study and they decide that, hey, here's where I need
to put that particular restaurant, that'sgoing to happen. I think that holds
true for a lot of the otherthings that we mentioned from that perspective,
(47:43):
and we're getting a home depot,but people don't think about the underlying employment
piece of that. That's where I'mgoing with that. Like, you made
a very good mention there, andI think you know, the kids that
are that are working at whataburger ordairy queen or you know, the coffee
place or whatever. Those are kidsthat would not have opportunity to have those
jobs in the city that they livein. Right. Look, it's not
(48:04):
just about those kids too, rightwhen I'm talking about teenager, but there's
other In America, absolutely, wehave this side gig mentality unfortunately, because
people are not able to live onthe income that they have from their primary
job. So we have a kindof side gig, you know, whether
you're delivering for favor, delivering DoorDash, or working a second job, or
you're going to have more jobs aroundhere, even just you know, again
(48:25):
stay at home mom who you know, wants a little bit of a break,
for lack of better terms, fromyou know, the kids, Like,
Hey, I'm going to work apart time job. I'm gonna pick
up six hours, eight hours,ten hours doing x y Z whatever that
x y Z is. I thinkthose are all things that a lot of
people overlook when you are talking aboutthis overall holistic machine that is being kind
(48:49):
of built as as we go.I think we do a better job of
planning out which lego pieces we're adding, you know, I think one thing
is that we really need primary employersand Leander, something like Samsung we couldn't
do because of their water needs andTailor's probably going to struggle with water.
But we need primary employers. Weneed those big companies coming. But at
(49:13):
the end of the day, they'regoing to look at how's the city functioning,
how's the development process. Does thecity council get along, And unfortunately
the answer was no. Recently onthat we made huge strides on that.
But companies do look for that thing. They look for those things. They
look to see if we're inclusive becausethey want their employees to live here.
(49:35):
They also are looking at housing,so they're looking at housing and like something
with the knife manufacture which I talkedabout that fell through, right, but
they were looking at housing for theiremployees. People want to live and work
here and we can't do that unlesswe have primary employers and we need that
commercial We need that development to fundour projects as well. Yeah. Now,
(49:57):
again it's a diversification of the taxspace. We talked about this in
the last episode too, that youknow, the conversations of you know,
how the feel and the small townand all that stuff, those are great
and I don't want to discount thatbecause there is there is a feeling that
you want to get from your home. I mean, I think, well,
(50:21):
Leander has a character. I mean, we're right across from old Town
and that's uniquely that small town feel. But as we go into a big
city, how was that going toHow can we keep that small town feel?
Sure you will, sure, AndI think it's important that you're emphasizing
feel because you can have the feelof a small town, but you can't
approach a larger city with a smalltown mentality. And I think we've seen
(50:44):
some changes that I think are positivefrom that perspective. I think they would
have happened anyway, but it's niceto have had, you know, for
the last few years a council thatwas at least looking at this and saying,
Okay, you know, how dowe solve for these these the these
issues in a way that it's conduciveto the long term growth of the city.
Kind of take me back to thatthing I said earlier. The city
(51:07):
keeps going like you know, youand I it's a little piece of influence
will be there for a few yearsand then someone else will step into that
role. And that's that and that'sgreat, and that's what volunteerism is about.
Sure, it's about leaving it.I'd said this to Christine because we
talked about, you know, theEconomic Development Committee. My job as the
(51:27):
chair of that committee was to leaveit better than how I found it,
and I hopefully did that. Youknow, time will tell, hopefully everyone
in the right mindset. I meanthat's what you should do. I mean
again, this civic minded and thiskind of we can call it political,
but it is. It's a civisit's an exercise in civics. The political
aspect I think complicates it. Butthe exercise in civics is you're interested,
(51:51):
you're engaged, and you want tomake sure that you leave it better than
wherein you found it, and notsaying that it was terrible when you found
it, just you can be betterand you can always improve. That's a
problem that sometimes people think, Idon't want to be a large city.
Well that has that has beyond ourship ship sailed and can we keep that
small town feel? Yes, yes, I think we can. But at
(52:13):
the same time, you have tobe planning for the future. If if
our past city councils had planned correctly, we probably wouldn't be in the water
situation they were in unfortunately, Andwe've been doing this. Council has been
doing a good job of pushing thoseprojects forward for water to ensure that when
we do have that population in twentytwenty seven, we're able to meet their
(52:34):
water needs right, right, andagain that's the plan. There are a
series of uncontrollable things around that too. You know, stops raining for five
years, so then what are yougonna do, right, We're gonna run
out of water. But the pipelinerepairs were part of planned activity, right.
We just are trying to express thatto our residents. We know it's
painful for no outdoor watering for sixweeks and that's coming up, but we
(52:59):
need to do that to do thosepipeline repairs. Sure, sure, I
mean it is. It's with aneye to the future. And with that
eye to the future, I knowyou yesterday kicked off your campaign. So
if you want to tell folks howto find you, like what where where
would they go? You can We'reright here, so you can just Oh,
okay, I think I've been lookingat the wrong camera. So I
(53:22):
had my kickoff campaign yesterday or mycampaign kickoff. Excuse my I still have
a head cold. So esmey forLeander is my website, so you can
go to wwwsmefurlander dot com. Mymy website is in Spanish as well and
learn more about me. My sonedited my website, so I do need
(53:43):
to go add more pictures and talkabout things, but I do have what
I've been focused on and what I'mgoing to focus on in the upcoming years.
So you can go to esmefur Leanderdot com request a sign you can
email me and donations are needed andrequired to run a campaign. It's pretty
(54:04):
expensive and everything else has gone upin price in three years. But look,
I hate asking people for money,but it's necessary evil to run a
campaign. And so well, thankyou very much. I appreciate you taking
the time to meet with me heretoday. I wish you, as I
do all the candidates, nothing butsuccess and luck going forward. And I
(54:24):
certainly hope that those of you whoare listening and watching can appreciate some of
the approach that we're taking here togive you a little bit of a different
view of some of the people whoare the movers and shakers in Leanda.
Thank you Andrew. I mean thisis beneficial so everyone in the community can
see just what the city council candidatesare, what's their mindset if you will.
(54:45):
Yep, No, that's what I'mhoping for. No, no,
thank you for being here. Icouldn't do it without you. I could
sit here and talk about all thatstuff and I have no one to talk
to. So thanks. But again, I appreciate the time. Thank you
so very very much, and thankyou for having this at a local business.
And I actually support this business,Fifth Element. Yeah, no,
for sure, a little commercial there. Yeah, Mike, Mike Brune has
(55:06):
been just extremely kind in allowing usto be here and do this here at
Fifth Element. It makes it alot easier when we have one place to
go. The camera setups can stayconsistent. I don't have to worry about
lighting. The lot goes into that. But yeah, Mike, thanks a
lot, and we still have towork on them. Come grab a beer
at Element in a great place.The owners are super great and I support
(55:28):
local businesses. And my husband Brucebeer at home, so he likes Bear,
so we do come here. Yeah. Like I said, it's really
close to my house, so Ido tend to be here myself for only
again maybe a little too Thanks againfor your time, no, I appreciate
it, and hopefully this has beenhelpful to you as a voter. Again.
You can go to vote in Leanderdot com and registered to vote if
(55:50):
you haven't already registered, as wellas find additional links and information on upcoming
elections and the city races as well. I'll be updating the webs i'd here
shortly as soon as all the candidatesare official. Then I'll go ahead and
put that information there for you aswell. But you know where to find
as me, and you know whereto find me, So we'll see you
next time. And I hope thatyou've enjoyed today's episode. Thanks a lot
(56:12):
of folks, all right, andwe're done
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