March 24, 2024 • 51 mins
Continuing the Vote In Leander Series in 2024 with Nacole Thompson, current occupant of place 4 on Leander City Council.Nacole is running for re-election and we chatted about her experience over the past 3 years and what she sees going forward here in Leander.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I sat down this past week withNicole Thompson, who's currently sitting in place
four on the Leander City Council asshe runs for reelection. Join me in
the conversation here on Lean and Leander. Back here at the Lanternmedia Studios with
(00:32):
my guest today, Nicole Thompson.Heyllen, Hey Nicole, good to see
you. Thank you. So we'recontinuing with the Voting Leander series, and
even though this will post as episodefifty eight, we're actually re recording,
so this is after episode fifty nine, just a technical detail for historical records.
(01:08):
Been nice enough to come back andkind of redo this, so we're
going to hopefully be able to followa similar path to our original recording of
the podcast, which was really good, by the way. Yeah, if
you ever want that at it,Yeah, that'll be the the blooper reel,
I guess anyway, But again,no, it was good. It
(01:32):
was really good. It flowed reallywell, so I was a little disappointed
that we couldn't use it, butanyway, anyway, so this one will
flow equally, if not better,right, we'll go with it, right,
all right, So Nicole and Iagain from just full transparency for the
audience. You know, we arefamiliar with each other. We've worked with
each other a couple of times oncouncil committees and things of that nature,
(01:55):
so we know each other. It'llbe a little bit more familiar than the
candidates per se. And that's goingto be the case for all of the
incumbents because again, I've served ina capacity with the city as a volunteer
on a couple of different commissions overthe past few years, so I'm a
little bit more of a known entityto council members and it makes it a
(02:17):
little bit easier for us to havethese conversations. So for you the audience,
you get that benefit, right,a familiarity, but it also allows
us to be able to kind ofgo back and say, all right,
well when we talked three years ago, right, and then compare. So
to start with Nicole again, whatI want to kind of do just for
the audience and help you guys geta little better better feel for you know
(02:38):
who she is and where she comesfrom. You've been a Leander resident for
well a long time. It's likeeleven twelve years a little more seventeen two
thousand and seven, two thousand andseven, and before that you lived in
Cedar Park. We lived in CedarPerk right before that. But I am
from Austin born and raised, andyeah, I went off to college and
(03:01):
when we came back, we settledin Cedar Park. So we talked about
this the last time, and oneof the things that we discussed was just
the rate of change and your uniqueperspective from that regard is you know,
you've been here throughout a lot ofthe growth that's occurred here in Central Texas.
(03:23):
Obviously as an Austinite, you've kindof seen it there, and then
you know you saw it in CedarPark. Was that one one of the
motivating factors for you to kind ofmove a little bit further out or well?
Actually, when we were in CedarPark, we moved there because my
parents lived there and we had youngkids and I wanted to be really close.
So it was an amazing experience tobe able to live have my kids
(03:46):
live close to their grandparents, sothey could walk home from school and go
to their grandparents' house. So we'dlove that. But when it came time
to buy, we couldn't actually affordCedar Park, gotcha, So we were
like, I saw a little placeif we keep going north. We had
went on a little trip to Bertram, right, and we were like,
wow, this is this is interestingout here. Maybe we can afford something.
(04:10):
So that's how we ended up inthere. Now I kind of I
kind of have a similar story inthat when we relocated from Houston, we
didn't really look in Cedar Park,but we kind of we started in Austin
and we kind of slowly circled outsideof the city center just because really it
(04:30):
was more it wasn't necessarily an affordabilityissue per se. It was more of
like bang for your buck kind ofissue, right, absolutely, because coming
from Houston, I mean I hadan expectation that, you know, housing
was going to be a little bitmore expensive in Austin. I didn't realize
how much more expensive in Austin.So we ended up in Leander because it
was it was equitable to the typeof you know, expenditure we would have
(04:54):
had in Houston, right, Andwe're getting a nice place and at the
time, there was a pasture inthe backyard. So yeah, I was
we really cool. There's it's notthere. And you bring up a good
point when I say it wasn't affordable, that is what I'm talking about.
When we looked at at the timewe looked at a house, it was
like two thousand square feet and wepaid almost seventy five thousand less to get
(05:14):
a thousand more square fee by comingto Leanders. So we were like,
this doesn't make sense for us.Although being a block from your parents is
great for us, it was Iwas like, it just doesn't make financial
sense for us to stay here.So they were upset that you were leaving,
right or where they relieved that youwere leaving. No, they they
were just happy that we were steppinginto home ownership. They were extremely happy.
(05:39):
Now my kids thought the world wasover, right, Like we're leaving
them at pop I'm like, guys, we're ten minutes away, right,
Calm down, It's okay, right, But yeah, the kids were more
devastated. Right. Speaking of thekids, the last time we met,
your son was in the state playoffsfor Glenn High School. He was,
(05:59):
he was and now he is.Basically he is going to start his senior
year of college at Texas A andm International Lreto. He plays basketball for
them. That's right. We talkedabout this. I remember this now,
Yes, yes, that's where mydad went after he went back to school
eight years old and went back toschool, got agree there. So he's
(06:20):
he's dust Devil's that that name?My goodness. Yeah, it's hard to
say when you're in the stands dustdevil. Yeah, okay, yeah,
it's just it's difficult. So butyes, he enjoys it and he's And
so from raising your kids in Leander, how many kids was it? Again?
We have three children, all threehave gone only to Leander Iced schools
(06:42):
from the beginning. And so I'vebeen able to be in the district from
kinder all the way through graduation.Our youngest graduates in May. And that
was some of your early community involvement, right, it was so Ptas and
yes, pta PTOs Youth Sports Leaguewith the one with also the Pack the
Career Athletic club over here in Leander. My husband also ran his own youth
(07:08):
sports program for years and years,so a lot of the kids in the
schools have had him as a coach. Yeah and he okay, so what
does he coach? Because I've beenmeaning to ask you this, I keep
forgetting to ask He's actually coached lotsof things. He is a basketball player
by tree, like he went tocollege and played basketball in college. He's
six' eight, so that's whathe did, right, and he was
(07:29):
a swimmer, right, not right, But he also coached football and for
the flag football league that we hadout here the I believe it's NFL Flag
Football, right, and so hecoached for them for I don't know,
eight nine years something like that.Cool. So yeah, football and basketball.
It's a good community involvement absolutely,and then again just from his historical
(07:50):
perspective, just help people kind ofget a better sense of who you are
and how you grew up. Yourfather was a pastor, or is a
pastor, right. The church's thechurch was actually an Austin and then relocated
out to Cedar Park and actually atour Justice of the Peace in Cedar Park,
we were allowed to use her courtroomfor church for a number of years.
(08:13):
So our church actually met in thatcourtroom for years. Oh wow,
okay, yeah, so we metup there for many years. I had
church up there. So yeah,and your father's still doing that. He's
retired, okay, right, right, I was trying to kind of remember
what we talked about the West.He's retired. He's retired. So Southern
(08:33):
Baptist, right, Southern Baptist.I went to Baylor University because it was
a Baptist university and had an amazingexperience at Baylor. And you're major in
college was communication communication. Okay,so and that was kind of one of
the things again I remember when wewere talking the last time we spoke,
(08:54):
is that, you know, againwith the community involvement and you're you know,
general communication skills. I think that'sprobably a fair way to say it.
You thought, Okay, there's anopportunity here for me to get involved.
There's an opportunity for me to kindof add my voice to the conversation.
(09:16):
Outside of that, what was itthat actually motivated you initially to run
for public office? So all ofthat kind of started back in nine.
I actually ran for school board forleandarisd school Board. Way back then.
I ran twice. And what motivatedme was I actually, at the time
(09:37):
had a career in real estate andI noticed that there was redistrict in going
on. I didn't have children inschool at the time, but people in
the property that I worked at weregetting rezoned to a school that was like
five miles away when there was aschool literally across the street. But they
had a dividing street, and Ithought, well, parents, that's a
(09:58):
longer travel time for your kids,Like y'all should be at these meetings getting
information and getting involved, Like Idon't even have kids in school, Like
I need for y'all to advocate foryourselves and for your children, Like why
make them ride the bus longer thanthey need to when there's literally a school
across the street. But if youdon't stand up, nobody is going to
know that you're impacted by this,right And so that I started thinking,
(10:20):
well, we need to get moreinvolved and understand what's happening with our school
district and with our kids, andthe best way to do that is to
just be involved, show up.Okay, So that's kind of how I
started. But I've always been involved, you know. At nineteen, I
started a gospel choir in the cityof Boston, Yes, and we traveled
all over and sung you know,music at different events. We opened the
(10:43):
concerts Antonio, Like. It wasan amazing experience for those young people because
they all came from economically disadvantaged families, and so to have them have another
opportunity to be involved. Everybody can'tdo school sports. Everybody can't do cheerleading
and pay the money that is requiredto be in some of those outside activities,
(11:03):
right, But everybody could be involvedin this, and we fundraise for
uniforms and for travel calls. Soit was it was a lot of fun,
and I saw the impact that Ihad and still I talked to some
of those kids and like, it'samazing how that impacted their life. And
so I knew getting involved in beingthe leader is important. So like that
was the you can say that's thegenesis or that's where the seed was planted
(11:28):
on just in general community involvement,but also understanding some of the organizational skills
that are necessary to execute on that, you know, fundraising all that other
good stuff. Yeah, that wasreally I guess my first business. I
didn't get paid or anything, butunderstanding how to organize and structure this group
(11:48):
of people and where we're going tomeet, and how to talk to others
to get them involved and get buyin for what you're trying to do in
the vision that you have. Right, And that was nonprofit I'm right,
yeah, always a good I've alwayfound that nonprofits are again if you if
you're inclined to be i'd I saythis community oriented without necessarily identifying specifically the
(12:13):
community. Like you're just like,I just want to make a difference,
right, So you're not necessarily sayingI want to make a difference and I'm
going to do this. You justsay I want to make I want to
make a difference. You kind oforganize a nonprofit effort, right, And
there's a lot of skill building thatcan be done through that process. Not
(12:33):
everybody's good at that, right,right, Yeah, everybody's not for me.
It was Look, this is whatmy talent is. This is I
grew up singing in church. Iwas praising worship leader several churches. So
I can use that talent to bringpeople together. And I love to travel.
So let's see. We actually hadkids in that group that had never
(12:54):
left the city of Allston. Wow, Like that was baffling to right,
how have you not been outside thecity? Right, But when you think
about economic disadvantage or people that don'tnecessarily have vehicles don't there's not extra money
for travel in the way that therewas in my household, Like, it
really opened up a world for themthat they otherwise wouldn't have had. So
(13:18):
it was interesting, Well, learneda lot. Yeah, So again,
you know it's kind of, ifyou want to say it this way,
kind of that's where you got thebug. And then as you progress through
your community involvement and then you knowkind of graduated into you know, more
of a civic kind of approach.Right, The opportunity presented itself three years
(13:39):
ago now, right, Yes,in twenty one, in twenty one,
really in twenty I guess, right, because yeah, because you kind of
decided that you were going to dosomething right, and at the time,
there was a lot of conversation aroundyou know, just representation, right,
just generally speaking, just making sureagain, an issue more related to the
(14:05):
speed of growth at that particular pointin time, Like we were just exploding
in Leander. It was it waspalatable. I mean, there was you
know, thousands of people moving inon a weekly basis. Looked very different
in twenty one than it looked inseven. Absolutely, I mean it well,
and it looks very different now,like, yeah, three years later,
it's a different town already, right, And so like at that particular
(14:31):
point in time, there was alot of conversation and I don't mean to
belittle the conversation per se that's notthe intent here, but there was a
lot of well, you know,we're a small town. We want to
keep our small town. And I'mlike, you know, folks, there's
already eighty thousand people here, Like, this isn't small anymore, right,
So we have to do things alittle bit differently, right, So you
have an opportunity to bring your voiceinto that mix. Let me ask you
(14:54):
this way. And I can't rememberhow I phrased it the last time,
but now with that experience, Imean, obviously you come in and there's
a learning curve, right, Right, Even with some previous exposure to organizational
and you know, execution as faras you know civically oriented stuff, you
(15:15):
have to learn, right, You'relearning while you're on the job, per
se. Yeah, I was probablyin a better position to learn. I
have an almost twenty year career infinance with in banking, so I'm not
unfamiliar with corporations and how they're setup and how leadership works. But it's
still a learning curve when you stepinto something you've never done before, and
(15:37):
sitting in the audience watching is verydifferent than having to execute the rules of
the quorum or the rules that havebeen put in place to make sure our
meetings go smoothly, and so itdid take a little bit to learn what
the process is to make sure we'refollowing open meeting at make sure that we
(15:58):
are responding the way that is appropriateto respond from the dias and that we're
keeping things private that need to beprivate, but that we're asking the right
questions of staff so that we canhave a full understanding of what's going on.
So when you first sat on thediococ your first exposure to this,
obviously there's always a little bit ofa like I said, a learning curve.
(16:22):
But as soon as you started toengage what were some of the things
that struck you out the gate,Like what was it that you saw,
They're like, okay, I canhelp with this, or I can I
can make this better. So oneof my first things was I am from
Austin's and because of my career,a lot of activity that I did was
in Austin even when we lived outin Leander, because my career was still
(16:45):
there. I noticed when I gotelected, I was like, well,
I'm here now and elected, soI want to make sure I celebrate m
ok Day here locally, and soI went to ask, Okay, so
what are we doing? What's onthe calendar? I don't know what normally
happens behind the scenes. And that'swhen I was told there is no Mlkday
here, right, And it's notsomething I would have known because we always
(17:07):
did everything in Austin, And Iwas like, there's not one here.
Well, that's uh. I knowthat there's a desire for one, and
I know there's got to be morepeople like me that don't necessarily want to
drive to Austin when we can celebratehere and we have a desire to do
it here. So that was oneof the first things that I just saw.
It was we don't have that here. Is there a way we can
make it happen? And after talkingwith all the leadership and they sat down
(17:32):
and agreed it was something they wereinterested in, wanted to do, and
that we could make it happen inthat short period of time, we went
to work to make it happen.And you did. You did. I
want to clarify because we did talkabout this last time. I want to
make sure and bring this up.You did receive a good deal of support
from city staff, fire, youknow, police, et cetera. Were
(17:53):
they were very much bought into theidea, right absolutely, because that was
the first thing that I did wassay, can I meet with everyone at
one time and just ask is thisgoing to add undo burden, undue pressure
on our police, on our fire, on our public works team, on
our parts and reg team. Isit something that you find value in?
(18:15):
Is it something that we could do? And they all said yes, and
that's how we moved forward. Okay. So in addition to mlkay, I
think you also spearheaded Juneteenth, right, Okay, So help me understand from
that perspective. Obviously you're creating someopportunities for community involvement. Absolutely, is
(18:36):
there a bigger vision there? Like, again, I know that one of
the reasons and correct me if I'mwrong if I speak out of turn here,
but one of the reasons that youwere interested in doing MLKA and Leander
was well, the only other placeI can really go to do this is
Austin thirty two thirty three miles parkingblah blah blah. Right, so you're
(18:56):
like, Okay, we can dosomething here, right, and then so
you basically create an event in thecity of Leander, and then you complement
that event with the Juneteenth event.So from a do you have a vision
there of like a larger opportunity tocreate some draw in the city like this
(19:17):
could be could have some potential economicimpact as well, right right, And
that would be the goal with anyof our events is to make sure they
do have economic impact, especially withthe Juneteenth. We've you know, the
planning committee has met several times andtalked about is there a bigger concert series
we could bring where we could sellout our hotel, where we could make
(19:37):
sure that we encourage people to goeat at our restaurants and just invest back
in our actual city from that event, drawing people from other parts of the
state. And we hope to dothat at some point. But really it's
about community engagement. That was oneof the things I ran on the first
time. And when I chuckle alittle bit when you say, because I've
(19:59):
heard it, we want to keepLeander small, We want our small town
feel and that's great, but oneof the ways for us to accomplish that
is through community engagement. The biggerthe city gets, the more community engagement,
in my opinion, becomes important becausepeople need to feel connected to their
city, need to feel connected tothe goals of the city, need to
(20:21):
feel connected to our fire and policeand feel comfortable that they are keeping them
safe. Like, there's a lotto be said for community engagement, and
so that's a huge part of whythese events allow us to reach different segments
of our community bring it together.And that's what I was going to say.
When we have these types of events, and there's a number that have
(20:41):
taken place in the last few yearsthat are new, like just the Dawali
is new, you know, andthat's not a city event, but it's
happening in the city, right,and it's bringing together a lot of people
to learn, right, right,And I mean I would make the argument
that you know, hey, thecity should be involved in those events at
some level of not directly sponsoring themor you know, directly behind the effort
(21:04):
to have them put on, becauseall of those events create an opportunity for
to your point, community engagement,but also community exposure, right, yes,
Because the the idea of a communityis you know, familiarity with your
neighbor, right to know who wholives next door, you know who lives
(21:26):
down the street and who lives aroundthe corner, and you know and that
that just kind of expands if youhave kids here, it's like who do
my kids go to school with?Right? And and from that perspective,
I think that's there's a great opportunityin Leander. I've always found and I've
you know, I've been here aboutsix years, but I've always found it
to be a very welcoming city overall. Like you know, generally, my
(21:51):
experiences have been, you know,people are open, and they're they're they're
happy to help, and you knowthey're looking to you know, a lot
of that because of small business,right, because there's a lot of small
business in Leander, so people area little bit more in tune. I
would say, just to like acustomer service model, a servant leadership right
(22:12):
from the individual businesses. They maynot call it that, but that's kind
of what they're doing, right,And I know that that's also one of
the things that I think you werecampaigning on, right, was like a
servant leader model. It makes adifference and the way you serve others.
Right. So in a servant leadermodel, for those who maybe are uninitiated
or maybe don't know that term,I don't want to presume everybody knows who
(22:33):
we're talking about. Essentially, theidea is the work that you do is
not for yourself but for others,right, and you receive your reward or
your come up into however you wantto frame that, from the experience of
others have and the success of theother staff. You're not worried about yourself
in other words, right, youdo what you do so that for the
(22:56):
greater good or again, however youwant to frame that, it's not for
yourself, like you take yourself outof the equation. Right, Well,
it goes back to what you said. Not everybody can has the ability to
do those things. So if youknow you have that ability, you use
it to bring folks together. Andin your experience, again you've put together
a couple of events, and there'sother things that we can talk about on
(23:18):
council tune. We will, butyour experience has been really a lot of
diverse voice within that. Right.It's absolutely it's not just the African American
community that it's involved here, there'speople from multiple areas. I've seen it
because I think I did an interviewwith one of your pastors last year,
(23:38):
probably yes on MLK SO and thatwas interesting because the people that I was
talking to in that process were allover the place. You know, it
wasn't just one community, no,and I think people tend to associate one
community, but the civil rights moveand impacted our whole country. It didn't
(23:59):
just impact one group of people,right, it changed things for everyone.
When you talk about Juneteenth, that'sTexas history, right, Like, that's
not just one group of people,like that is we are talking about Texas
history. So it impacts all ofus. So it's always important to me
to bring a diverse group of peopleto the table. People from different backgrounds,
(24:19):
different walks of life, different religiousbeliefs, no religious beliefs, people
with different familial statuses. Like,everybody has something from their circle of influence
that they can bring that can helpus be better. And so I want
to hear from all of it ifI have the opportunity. Yeah, And
I think that's an important point tomake again, just from the perspective of
(24:41):
the way that you pursue leadership inthe city. To talk about the council
positions, and we talk about thiswith most of the candidates, if not
all of them, is that youknow, it's a it's an it's a
citywide representation absolutely, right, Soyou're not you know, segmenting the city
into four, you know, districtsor anything along those lines. Conversation for
(25:03):
another day, maybe we should,but right now it's it's it's at large,
and so you have to be ableto interact with at least thirty nine
square miles of people, right orlike you, you really should And we
talked about this before. For memaking decisions at the end of the day,
(25:25):
is it in the best interests ofLeander? Is it in the best
interest of our citizens? That hasto be my baseline for making decisions,
right, and that helps keep youon the straight and narrow that you're representing
the city right, right, Andsee you are the Queen of Seguees.
I mean you do a really goodjob with that. So yeah, because
that's where I was going with thisis it's about representation, and this is
(25:48):
my way of looking at it.Every council position is essentially running for mayor
without the title. Right, themayor is the only race where someone's saying
I want to be at the headof the table, right. Everybody else
is saying I want to be atthe table. So in our government and
our governance here in the City ofLeander. That's how it works. And
(26:12):
when you go and you do anykind of researcher, if you look at
the way that the that the charteris set up, it's the citizens of
Leander at the are at the top, and then you know, the council
serves the citizens and then the counciladvises the staff. Right at the end
of the day. This is avolunteer position. Okay, it's like it's
(26:36):
like any committee assignment. You're notgetting paid for this, right, not
in our city, we are notright, And so it's important to understand
that, in my opinion as avoter, that you really this truly,
truly is really a representative type governance, Like these are people who are speaking
(26:56):
for you, people who are speakingfor your interests, right, which is
why it's so important that people getinvolved and stay involved. And believe me,
I have three kids. I getit. It is easy to disconnect
and just say I want to goto work, I want to go home.
I got a few my kids,I got my business to runt like,
I get all of that. Butwhen you have a chance to plug
(27:19):
in and know what's happening, it'sreally important because these folks have been elected
to represent you, and if there'sa problem, we don't live all over
the city. We live in ourneighborhoods, just like you live in yours.
But if there's an issue happening,make us aware, send an email,
come to a meeting, have apublic comment, like there are ways
to get involved and plug in sothat we can make sure we continue to
(27:42):
represent your interest as best we can. Yeah, and I think plugging in
is is I would say tune in, but that's right I do with this,
but or listen up or lean inanyway lead. But yeah, So
one of the one of the thingsthat I try to do with this podcast,
and one of the one one ofthe areas that I really try to
(28:03):
stress is just the involvement as aas a voter in the city you know
where. Again, we're at likeeighty nine thousand people in this city.
Little more now, yah, yeah, Okay, so I'm gonna start saying
ninety two. It's like five ninetyfive, close to ninety four and some
chains. Wow. Okay, no, I'm out of that loop. But
(28:25):
okay, so let's see we're closeto one hundred thousand were we are We're
already close to one hundred thousand,and I know when I first moved here,
the conversation was, well, youknow, we might be at one
hundred thousand by twenty twenty five,you know, so it's a lot faster
than what a lot of people thought. Yes, the point I'm trying to
make here is that they're with thatmany people in the city. It's key
that you get involved from the very, very most simple exercise of civic duty
(28:49):
is just vote, registered to vote, and then vote. There's still,
I believe, an opportunity to registerto vote. I think that's until how
you have it by the days beforethe election. Okay, okay, so
and the election is May fourth,fourth, so April fourth ish, like
I don't know I should know this, I don't right now, but yeah,
(29:11):
so keep your eye on that,and you know that week of April
first, you know, you shouldbe registered to vote already. If you're
not, do it now. Youcan go to vote on the ender dot
com. I have links to allof the registration mechanisms that you need.
You don't even have to literally fillin a form. It's simple, it's
very very easy to do. Youcan check your registration status there as well.
(29:33):
And then if you're new to Texas, if you just moved here,
I think it's you have to bea resident, an official resident for thirty
days, and then you can registerto vote. And usually when you update
your driver's license you get the optionto your vote registration. Can you move
here? So part of what wetry to do here is again expose you
as a listener or viewer to youknow, who is making themselves available to
(29:56):
represent you and give you an ideaof who they are and what they've done.
And but the other piece of thatis to vote. Like that's the
point, get out there and vote. We have a paltry number of people
who actually end up voting at theend of the day. It was,
if I remember correctly, the lastelection, was around five point three percent
(30:18):
of the total registered voters. That'snot even the people who live here,
that's just the people who took thetime to go register to vote, right,
which statistically it's between seventy and eightypercent in the state of Texas.
Now, whether that's reflective of Leanderper se, again, I'm speculating on
some statistics that I'm familiar with,but I just don't have them in front
(30:38):
of me. But we need wejust there needs to be more of that.
And if you if you're not doingthat, then you're you're losing an
opportunity to express a direction at thevery very minimum. Right, you may
not be talking to Nicole on adaily basis, may not have issues that
(31:00):
need to be addressed, but Nicoleis working and we'll talk about this.
There's two council meetings a month,yes, right, what did we say
last time? There's like fourteen agendaitems on pretty much every a little more
so usually we have which is toomany? That last time it's too many,
(31:22):
like you know, ten to fifteenthings on consent agenda and then we
usually have six to eight additional thingsnow sometimes more. When we when I
first got elected, our meetings wererunning into like eleven pm at night.
Yeah, I used to use themto go to sleep. Yeah, twelve
am at one meeting it was likeafter one a Yeah, I remember that
one and I was just like,oh my gosh, like and that's a
(31:45):
lot again. You know, youhave your business, yes, right,
and you you work all day longand then you know you spend you know,
I'm not going to presume how muchtime you spend, but you do
spend time prepping for those meetings,reading through whatever the staff is prepared for
you to you know, to beready, and then you go to the
meeting and then you're there for anothersix hours. Right. Yeah, that's
(32:06):
a lot. It is a lot, and it's for three years and that's
what we find. Yes, I'lltry to bring it. I'll try to
set it back up. So ifI remember correctly prior to you deciding to
open up your business, for youto find hair care products that you were
looking for or you know, anybeauty supplies that you were looking for,
it's like a twenty minute drive orsomething like that, right, Yeah,
(32:29):
it was actually longer. Okay,so I didn't fully remember it, but
that's okay. Yeah, we would, you know, looking around how much
Leander has grown. I was talkingto my husband. I was like,
it's crazy that we have to leaveour community to go get things that we
need for our daily care of ourhair. And there's got to be something
we can do about that. Andhe agreed, and so we decided to
(32:53):
start Lander Beauty Supply. But yes, I was driving upwards of forty minutes
to another city to buy the typeof shampoo and conditioner and things that I
needed just for my daily haircare becausethose type of products weren't necessarily offered at
HB or at Walmart. They mayhave one or two products, but they
don't have everything you need. Sonow you're running around to multiple stores to
(33:16):
get the basic things you need.And I was like, we shouldn't have
to leave our own community and spendtax dollars elsewhere and invest in someone else's
community. There's got to be away for us to do that right here.
So that's how we came up withthat idea. And how long have
you been The store has been openfifteen months now, so a little bit
(33:36):
more than a year. Yeah,how's that experience? Like we talked a
little bit about this the last time, so your experience as a business owner?
What I hear when I have conversationswith small business in Leander and through
various committees that I've served dow inthe city, there's an undertone of Leander's
(33:57):
hard to work with. It's ahard city to work with. And we
kind of listen out a little bitmore last time we talked about it.
So your business you were going toan established mall strip mall, right,
established location and just basically renting aspace. So your need for you know,
(34:20):
permissions and certificates and all the thingsthat you need to open a business
with were lessened because of that.Right. Yeah, I think educating people
on the different ways to get inbusiness is important, and that's something that
you know as a council member.I'm open to meeting with people. I
meet with business owners all the time. Now. People will come by the
store and ask me questions, andI'm always open to talk about what my
(34:44):
experience is. But I fully recognizethat anytime you have a bureaucratic organization,
there are going to be some challengessometimes, right, and things that have
to be overcome to get accomplished whatyou need to get accomplished. But my
process was different, and I saythat it was different not because I'm a
council member, just because of thepath that I chose to open my business,
(35:05):
and because I was not physically buildinga new facility and I wasn't purchasing
a facility. I rented a facilityand my landlord went through the permit process
under his umbrella for all of theunits that he manages, and so my
process was different. I didn't haveto meet with the fire, they met
with fire and just let me know, hey, your certificate of occupancy is
(35:30):
approved, or hey we got tomove the sprinklers, so it's going to
take longer for you to move in. It was things like that, so
not so much me physically walking throughthe permit process. Now where I did
have an opportunity to work through thepermit process and I punted the ball on
that was for my fine for thebusiness. I went and found a sign
(35:51):
company and he asked, Hey,do you want to do your permit or
would you like us to do thepertmit? And I said, I'm going
to let you do that because you'rethe expert. I'm not an engineer.
I don't know all of the specificationsand dimensions of the sign, and I
don't have time. I'm running mybusiness, so I would prefer for you
to handle that for me, right. And I think one of the things
we talked about was, you know, with that, you had an opportunity
(36:16):
to go into a relatively established space, and you know, I'm sure that
you did all of the due diligenceon that from a location, because you
know, small business, it's alwayslocation, location, location, it is
so but it brought up a reallygood point because a lot of times when
you hear that conversation, it's context. Right. So as a small business
(36:38):
owner, if you're going into anestablished environment or an established location, there's
far fewer hurdles for you. I'mnot saying there's not any, but there's
far fewer hurdles for you to haveto overcome as a small business owner.
And the conversations that are framed asit relates to Leander are typically more of
(37:01):
the developers saying, hey, thisis an onerous, you know process,
Like we have trouble getting through this. Some of it is on purpose and
some of it is unintentional. Right, And we've done things as a city
to encourage understanding the process so thatyou can move through that process quicker.
(37:24):
Since we got elected our council,you know, our Development Services Department has
now had developer meetings where they meetonce a month so talk about what's working,
what's not working, and so we'vetried to listen to the community and
say, Okay, what can wedo to make this process smoother. We've
had some updates to our ordinances andcodes so that things can move a lot
(37:46):
more smoothly, and as far assmall business, typically, what I hear
is after a business is open challengesthat they have for marketing and signage,
and so we've tried to address thatwith the news sign ordinance update that hadn't
been done in a while. Sothat got approved several months ago, and
then now we left our sales roomto update that even further to say,
(38:09):
okay, every six months, let'sreview it and say is this working?
Is this not working? What arewe hearing from small business owners? I
shared with you at that time,I had an incident where I had super
flags in front of my business becausemy particular location. While location is key,
I got the last spot that wasavailable. So I'm behind the front.
(38:32):
You cannot see me from the road, so no signage and no visibility,
no visibility from the road. It'sjust a matter of people want the
service that we provide so they findus. And so that incident with the
swiper flags. Now it's a partof our sign ordinance, but now figuring
out is it working. Do weneed to do something even more proactive to
(38:53):
help small business be successful and havevisibility in a way that we didn't consider
for And that's why having all thosediverse people at the table. Makes a
difference when you have people making decisionsmaybe that aren't in a particular community.
You may not know and it's nothingmalicious, it just may not be a
part of your experience. And ifpeople don't speak up, send you emails,
(39:16):
make calls, and if people don'thave the ability to be specific,
because sometimes it's just easy to sayI don't like it, m it's a
little bit harder to like drill downon what it is specifically you don't like,
right, and then what you wouldlike to see in right, right,
like the why. I mean,it's always it's always the why,
Like, well, why don't youlike it? Right? And what would
(39:37):
you do about it? And whatwould we do differently? And then have
that conversation. So that that makesme want to ask you, have you,
in your opinion, have you seenprocess improvement in your tenure over the
last three years? Like again,you know there's a lot going on,
(39:59):
you know there's so you're in agrowing city, you know, expanding population,
a lot of new growth, alot of new development, a need
to expand the economic drivers for thecity. Right, You're going from essentially
a bedroom community which is highly relianton property taxes and you're adding in a
(40:22):
component of business taxes, of ofrevenue that's generated off of class what is
a Class C and Class A typeestablishments commercial right, And there's a limitation
to that in Leander because again there'sthere's concerns about the water and the infrastructure,
(40:44):
the development costs for you know,going from zero to something, right,
that's expensive, that can be moreexpensive. It is more expensive.
Right. So when you when youstep into that role and you're part of
that conversation on a regular basis,how in your opinion, you know,
how has this council and with throughyour efforts, how do you feel you've
(41:07):
impacted that to the positive? Ithink the most important thing we've done is
focus on water. Water has beenthe focus because if we don't feel like
we have capacity, we're not goingto attract those big economic businesses that want
to come here and do business andmove their hair quarters here. We have
to have the infrastructure in place.And one thing I love to tell people,
(41:30):
and I don't think they realize,when we're dealing with water or other
natural resources, it is a complicatedand cumbersome process to get through, especially
when you have multiple entities that areworking together to resolve it, and it
just takes longer. If I decideto do something for my business, I
(41:51):
decided and I go handle it.If I decide to do something for my
family, we can make a decisionpretty quick and turn the ship around.
It's not that easy when you aredealing with the lives of one hundred plus
thousand people. When you're dealing withthat times three different cities and three different
entities. So for example, youknow, I've heard comments, well,
(42:13):
they need to hurry up and fixthe piping for bcr UA, not realizing
that we ordered the pipe over ayear ago. It took nine months to
get it in. So it's nota matter of not wanting to work quicker.
Things just take longer when you're dealingwith some of these these issues.
So for me, the most importantthing we can do to impact economic development,
(42:37):
and it may not be an instantaneousresponse that you see right away,
but was really to focus on infrastructureso that we can pull in some of
those large and mid sized businesses becausewe have the infrastructure to provide services right
right. And so when you talkabout that, then the vision is not
not you know today, it's tomorrow. Right, there is some today because
(43:00):
I believe Leander has an amazing smallbusiness community. We have done an amazing
job in cultivating that, and thesmall business owners that are here are just
such amazing people and dedicated to supportingother small business and even the residents here
like are looking for opportunities to supportsmall business. I see it every day
in my business. But because ofthat, I think we have a strong
(43:22):
economy that way. But if wewant to expand, and we do,
we really do have to think longterm. What are some of the things
that have to be in place todaythat we're planning for today that makes a
difference in three years. We haveto be thinking about that. Was that
an education process for you as well? I mean, again, I don't
want to assume that you know,you didn't think that way, but you
(43:44):
know, once you had the exposureto the actual position and the conversations that
took place and the council agenda itemsthat all start to address these things.
To your point, it's a verycomplicated, complex, almost sometimes convoluted process,
(44:05):
right, And there's a lot ofdifferent not only a lot of moving
pieces, there's a lot of movingpieces, right, moving pieces and to
wrap your mind around it. Iwas able to get a grasp of it.
Like I said, I think mycorporate career helped me do that.
My past experience for the last twentyplus years with different nonprofits and them navigating
financial campaigns and different things like that, I was able to get my hands
(44:29):
around it and understand what was happeningand what needed to happen. And it
just made me even more intentional aboutasking very good questions, doing your research
ahead of meetings, making sure youunderstand timelines and that everyone is held accountable
to clearly outlining what they plan todo. And then you make sure you
(44:51):
show up and keep track of timelinesand when change orders come that you're actually
reviewing them and making sure that it'snot sending off off but and if it
is, that there's an explanation forit, because we got to be able
to explain that to our public.So it just made me be even more
intentional about the review work that Ido ahead of time. So now looking
(45:14):
back at the last three years,help us understand what motivates you now to
continue to do that. I mean, that's a pretty big commitment. At
the end of the day. Thefirst three years and now you're saying I
want to do this again. Ithink that I'm in a unique position as
a business owner, as a wife, as a mom, as somebody who
(45:35):
has been a committed community volunteer formany, many years, and as someone
who has been here for ten plusyears and seeing just how quickly the city
has changed. I think I havea unique perspective to bring and my voice
at the table will continue to helpus to grow in the right direction and
continue to put things first that needto come first, and most importantly that's
(45:58):
taken care of Leander well with thatand keeping an eye on our agenda.
Yes, today, I know youhave to go, so I want to
make sure and keep us other time. But thank you again, And I
really really appreciate you making the extraeffort to come back and red and redo
the take right and Nicole's It's reallya very generous thing to do, because
(46:22):
I you know, this is justa passion project. Yeah, but I
think it's helpful and I think itserves a purpose in our community to get
some of these conversations out there rightright, just to help kind of have
that conversation. Because I have aunique opportunity to sit down with people like
you, Whereas a lot of peopleeither maybe because they don't have the time,
(46:43):
or they're shy or whatever, theywouldn't do that, right. So
that's kind of how I look atthis. It gives people an opportunity for,
you know, for me to havea nice, casual conversation, talk
about a few things. We don'tavoid topics, We talk about them in
a very reasonable manner and help peopleunderstand, you know, what makes you
tick. Well. I appreciate youdoing this and the reason why I'm willing
(47:04):
to come back. It's important thatpeople get out and vote. And I
often I don't think that people don'tvote because they're irresponsible or they just refuse
to do it. People don't know, people don't have access to the information.
It's hard when you see political signsgo up everywhere to know, well,
what's happening now the political bloom becauseyou know primaries were in March,
(47:24):
so you see signs again, youknow about November, like, what's happening?
Why is it happening? Right?And then you don't know exactly where
to go access information that is fairand so I appreciate this opportunity to present,
you know, my candidacy, whatI'm about, the work that I've
done, and what I want todo going forward. Okay, so again
(47:45):
an excellent segue. Help people understandwhere they can find information. I love
it about you, like, what'syour website, what's your socials, et
cetera. So here's my shirt,I have a cure code. That's there,
but you can go to Nicole Thompsondot com. That is our website.
Has all the information about the workthat I've done in the past,
(48:06):
what my goals are if should Ibe reelected in May, and then some
personal information about me and my familyand how we chose Leander and why I'm
here and all the good things Iwant to do. Awesome. Awesome.
So when we complete the vote inLeander series, I'm going to put links
up to each of the candidates.I'm going to wait till we have all
of the candidates represented it to makeit fair for everybody. So I'm not
(48:29):
giving anybody any kind of like advantage. You can find stuff quicker, now,
No, that's I'll be fair aboutthat. But again, thank you
so so very much. Thank youfor being here, and I hope this
is something that you as a memberof the public at large here in Leander
appreciate. Let me know if youdo, let me know if you don't.
If there's something I can do better, help me understand what that is.
(48:51):
But in the meanwhile, go tovote vote in Leander dot com.
I should remember my own website andnot going. There's a lot going and
find out, you know, someof the some of the basics of how
this works. There's there's information thereagain on like how our government here in
Leander is structured and what you canexpect from that perspective. And remember,
(49:14):
folks, most most of all,I think to me, this is probably
one of the most important things thatI try to stress. Take the time
to get yourself registered, take yourtime to get to the polls, and
remember at the end of the day, the end of the day, I'll
edit that one out. At theend of the day. These folks are
serving you, they representing you,and they're doing it because they have a
(49:36):
vested interest in the long term benefitof the citizenry of Leander. They don't
get paid. There's no one makinga lot of money being a council member
or mayor here in Leander. That'snot that's not how we work. And
it's important that you understand that,especially if you're new, because you might
have a different impression of how thingswork because some cities around here are a
little different. But with that wewill wrap this one up again. Thank
(50:00):
you so much y'all. May fory'all next time. Bye bye, no
(51:04):
no m a a man
I sat down this past week withNicole Thompson, who's currently sitting in place
four on the Leander City Council asshe runs for reelection. Join me in
the conversation here on Lean and Leander. Back here at the Lanternmedia Studios with
(00:32):
my guest today, Nicole Thompson.Heyllen, Hey Nicole, good to see
you. Thank you. So we'recontinuing with the Voting Leander series, and
even though this will post as episodefifty eight, we're actually re recording,
so this is after episode fifty nine, just a technical detail for historical records.
(01:08):
Been nice enough to come back andkind of redo this, so we're
going to hopefully be able to followa similar path to our original recording of
the podcast, which was really good, by the way. Yeah, if
you ever want that at it,Yeah, that'll be the the blooper reel,
I guess anyway, But again,no, it was good. It
(01:32):
was really good. It flowed reallywell, so I was a little disappointed
that we couldn't use it, butanyway, anyway, so this one will
flow equally, if not better,right, we'll go with it, right,
all right, So Nicole and Iagain from just full transparency for the
audience. You know, we arefamiliar with each other. We've worked with
each other a couple of times oncouncil committees and things of that nature,
(01:55):
so we know each other. It'llbe a little bit more familiar than the
candidates per se. And that's goingto be the case for all of the
incumbents because again, I've served ina capacity with the city as a volunteer
on a couple of different commissions overthe past few years, so I'm a
little bit more of a known entityto council members and it makes it a
(02:17):
little bit easier for us to havethese conversations. So for you the audience,
you get that benefit, right,a familiarity, but it also allows
us to be able to kind ofgo back and say, all right,
well when we talked three years ago, right, and then compare. So
to start with Nicole again, whatI want to kind of do just for
the audience and help you guys geta little better better feel for you know
(02:38):
who she is and where she comesfrom. You've been a Leander resident for
well a long time. It's likeeleven twelve years a little more seventeen two
thousand and seven, two thousand andseven, and before that you lived in
Cedar Park. We lived in CedarPerk right before that. But I am
from Austin born and raised, andyeah, I went off to college and
(03:01):
when we came back, we settledin Cedar Park. So we talked about
this the last time, and oneof the things that we discussed was just
the rate of change and your uniqueperspective from that regard is you know,
you've been here throughout a lot ofthe growth that's occurred here in Central Texas.
(03:23):
Obviously as an Austinite, you've kindof seen it there, and then
you know you saw it in CedarPark. Was that one one of the
motivating factors for you to kind ofmove a little bit further out or well?
Actually, when we were in CedarPark, we moved there because my
parents lived there and we had youngkids and I wanted to be really close.
So it was an amazing experience tobe able to live have my kids
(03:46):
live close to their grandparents, sothey could walk home from school and go
to their grandparents' house. So we'dlove that. But when it came time
to buy, we couldn't actually affordCedar Park, gotcha, So we were
like, I saw a little placeif we keep going north. We had
went on a little trip to Bertram, right, and we were like,
wow, this is this is interestingout here. Maybe we can afford something.
(04:10):
So that's how we ended up inthere. Now I kind of I
kind of have a similar story inthat when we relocated from Houston, we
didn't really look in Cedar Park,but we kind of we started in Austin
and we kind of slowly circled outsideof the city center just because really it
(04:30):
was more it wasn't necessarily an affordabilityissue per se. It was more of
like bang for your buck kind ofissue, right, absolutely, because coming
from Houston, I mean I hadan expectation that, you know, housing
was going to be a little bitmore expensive in Austin. I didn't realize
how much more expensive in Austin.So we ended up in Leander because it
was it was equitable to the typeof you know, expenditure we would have
(04:54):
had in Houston, right, Andwe're getting a nice place and at the
time, there was a pasture inthe backyard. So yeah, I was
we really cool. There's it's notthere. And you bring up a good
point when I say it wasn't affordable, that is what I'm talking about.
When we looked at at the timewe looked at a house, it was
like two thousand square feet and wepaid almost seventy five thousand less to get
(05:14):
a thousand more square fee by comingto Leanders. So we were like,
this doesn't make sense for us.Although being a block from your parents is
great for us, it was Iwas like, it just doesn't make financial
sense for us to stay here.So they were upset that you were leaving,
right or where they relieved that youwere leaving. No, they they
were just happy that we were steppinginto home ownership. They were extremely happy.
(05:39):
Now my kids thought the world wasover, right, Like we're leaving
them at pop I'm like, guys, we're ten minutes away, right,
Calm down, It's okay, right, But yeah, the kids were more
devastated. Right. Speaking of thekids, the last time we met,
your son was in the state playoffsfor Glenn High School. He was,
(05:59):
he was and now he is.Basically he is going to start his senior
year of college at Texas A andm International Lreto. He plays basketball for
them. That's right. We talkedabout this. I remember this now,
Yes, yes, that's where mydad went after he went back to school
eight years old and went back toschool, got agree there. So he's
(06:20):
he's dust Devil's that that name?My goodness. Yeah, it's hard to
say when you're in the stands dustdevil. Yeah, okay, yeah,
it's just it's difficult. So butyes, he enjoys it and he's And
so from raising your kids in Leander, how many kids was it? Again?
We have three children, all threehave gone only to Leander Iced schools
(06:42):
from the beginning. And so I'vebeen able to be in the district from
kinder all the way through graduation.Our youngest graduates in May. And that
was some of your early community involvement, right, it was so Ptas and
yes, pta PTOs Youth Sports Leaguewith the one with also the Pack the
Career Athletic club over here in Leander. My husband also ran his own youth
(07:08):
sports program for years and years,so a lot of the kids in the
schools have had him as a coach. Yeah and he okay, so what
does he coach? Because I've beenmeaning to ask you this, I keep
forgetting to ask He's actually coached lotsof things. He is a basketball player
by tree, like he went tocollege and played basketball in college. He's
six' eight, so that's whathe did, right, and he was
(07:29):
a swimmer, right, not right, But he also coached football and for
the flag football league that we hadout here the I believe it's NFL Flag
Football, right, and so hecoached for them for I don't know,
eight nine years something like that.Cool. So yeah, football and basketball.
It's a good community involvement absolutely,and then again just from his historical
(07:50):
perspective, just help people kind ofget a better sense of who you are
and how you grew up. Yourfather was a pastor, or is a
pastor, right. The church's thechurch was actually an Austin and then relocated
out to Cedar Park and actually atour Justice of the Peace in Cedar Park,
we were allowed to use her courtroomfor church for a number of years.
(08:13):
So our church actually met in thatcourtroom for years. Oh wow,
okay, yeah, so we metup there for many years. I had
church up there. So yeah,and your father's still doing that. He's
retired, okay, right, right, I was trying to kind of remember
what we talked about the West.He's retired. He's retired. So Southern
(08:33):
Baptist, right, Southern Baptist.I went to Baylor University because it was
a Baptist university and had an amazingexperience at Baylor. And you're major in
college was communication communication. Okay,so and that was kind of one of
the things again I remember when wewere talking the last time we spoke,
(08:54):
is that, you know, againwith the community involvement and you're you know,
general communication skills. I think that'sprobably a fair way to say it.
You thought, Okay, there's anopportunity here for me to get involved.
There's an opportunity for me to kindof add my voice to the conversation.
(09:16):
Outside of that, what was itthat actually motivated you initially to run
for public office? So all ofthat kind of started back in nine.
I actually ran for school board forleandarisd school Board. Way back then.
I ran twice. And what motivatedme was I actually, at the time
(09:37):
had a career in real estate andI noticed that there was redistrict in going
on. I didn't have children inschool at the time, but people in
the property that I worked at weregetting rezoned to a school that was like
five miles away when there was aschool literally across the street. But they
had a dividing street, and Ithought, well, parents, that's a
(09:58):
longer travel time for your kids,Like y'all should be at these meetings getting
information and getting involved, Like Idon't even have kids in school, Like
I need for y'all to advocate foryourselves and for your children, Like why
make them ride the bus longer thanthey need to when there's literally a school
across the street. But if youdon't stand up, nobody is going to
know that you're impacted by this,right And so that I started thinking,
(10:20):
well, we need to get moreinvolved and understand what's happening with our school
district and with our kids, andthe best way to do that is to
just be involved, show up.Okay, So that's kind of how I
started. But I've always been involved, you know. At nineteen, I
started a gospel choir in the cityof Boston, Yes, and we traveled
all over and sung you know,music at different events. We opened the
(10:43):
concerts Antonio, Like. It wasan amazing experience for those young people because
they all came from economically disadvantaged families, and so to have them have another
opportunity to be involved. Everybody can'tdo school sports. Everybody can't do cheerleading
and pay the money that is requiredto be in some of those outside activities,
(11:03):
right, But everybody could be involvedin this, and we fundraise for
uniforms and for travel calls. Soit was it was a lot of fun,
and I saw the impact that Ihad and still I talked to some
of those kids and like, it'samazing how that impacted their life. And
so I knew getting involved in beingthe leader is important. So like that
was the you can say that's thegenesis or that's where the seed was planted
(11:28):
on just in general community involvement,but also understanding some of the organizational skills
that are necessary to execute on that, you know, fundraising all that other
good stuff. Yeah, that wasreally I guess my first business. I
didn't get paid or anything, butunderstanding how to organize and structure this group
(11:48):
of people and where we're going tomeet, and how to talk to others
to get them involved and get buyin for what you're trying to do in
the vision that you have. Right, And that was nonprofit I'm right,
yeah, always a good I've alwayfound that nonprofits are again if you if
you're inclined to be i'd I saythis community oriented without necessarily identifying specifically the
(12:13):
community. Like you're just like,I just want to make a difference,
right, So you're not necessarily sayingI want to make a difference and I'm
going to do this. You justsay I want to make I want to
make a difference. You kind oforganize a nonprofit effort, right, And
there's a lot of skill building thatcan be done through that process. Not
(12:33):
everybody's good at that, right,right, Yeah, everybody's not for me.
It was Look, this is whatmy talent is. This is I
grew up singing in church. Iwas praising worship leader several churches. So
I can use that talent to bringpeople together. And I love to travel.
So let's see. We actually hadkids in that group that had never
(12:54):
left the city of Allston. Wow, Like that was baffling to right,
how have you not been outside thecity? Right, But when you think
about economic disadvantage or people that don'tnecessarily have vehicles don't there's not extra money
for travel in the way that therewas in my household, Like, it
really opened up a world for themthat they otherwise wouldn't have had. So
(13:18):
it was interesting, Well, learneda lot. Yeah, So again,
you know it's kind of, ifyou want to say it this way,
kind of that's where you got thebug. And then as you progress through
your community involvement and then you knowkind of graduated into you know, more
of a civic kind of approach.Right, The opportunity presented itself three years
(13:39):
ago now, right, Yes,in twenty one, in twenty one,
really in twenty I guess, right, because yeah, because you kind of
decided that you were going to dosomething right, and at the time,
there was a lot of conversation aroundyou know, just representation, right,
just generally speaking, just making sureagain, an issue more related to the
(14:05):
speed of growth at that particular pointin time, Like we were just exploding
in Leander. It was it waspalatable. I mean, there was you
know, thousands of people moving inon a weekly basis. Looked very different
in twenty one than it looked inseven. Absolutely, I mean it well,
and it looks very different now,like, yeah, three years later,
it's a different town already, right, And so like at that particular
(14:31):
point in time, there was alot of conversation and I don't mean to
belittle the conversation per se that's notthe intent here, but there was a
lot of well, you know,we're a small town. We want to
keep our small town. And I'mlike, you know, folks, there's
already eighty thousand people here, Like, this isn't small anymore, right,
So we have to do things alittle bit differently, right, So you
have an opportunity to bring your voiceinto that mix. Let me ask you
(14:54):
this way. And I can't rememberhow I phrased it the last time,
but now with that experience, Imean, obviously you come in and there's
a learning curve, right, Right, Even with some previous exposure to organizational
and you know, execution as faras you know civically oriented stuff, you
(15:15):
have to learn, right, You'relearning while you're on the job, per
se. Yeah, I was probablyin a better position to learn. I
have an almost twenty year career infinance with in banking, so I'm not
unfamiliar with corporations and how they're setup and how leadership works. But it's
still a learning curve when you stepinto something you've never done before, and
(15:37):
sitting in the audience watching is verydifferent than having to execute the rules of
the quorum or the rules that havebeen put in place to make sure our
meetings go smoothly, and so itdid take a little bit to learn what
the process is to make sure we'refollowing open meeting at make sure that we
(15:58):
are responding the way that is appropriateto respond from the dias and that we're
keeping things private that need to beprivate, but that we're asking the right
questions of staff so that we canhave a full understanding of what's going on.
So when you first sat on thediococ your first exposure to this,
obviously there's always a little bit ofa like I said, a learning curve.
(16:22):
But as soon as you started toengage what were some of the things
that struck you out the gate,Like what was it that you saw,
They're like, okay, I canhelp with this, or I can I
can make this better. So oneof my first things was I am from
Austin's and because of my career,a lot of activity that I did was
in Austin even when we lived outin Leander, because my career was still
(16:45):
there. I noticed when I gotelected, I was like, well,
I'm here now and elected, soI want to make sure I celebrate m
ok Day here locally, and soI went to ask, Okay, so
what are we doing? What's onthe calendar? I don't know what normally
happens behind the scenes. And that'swhen I was told there is no Mlkday
here, right, And it's notsomething I would have known because we always
(17:07):
did everything in Austin, And Iwas like, there's not one here.
Well, that's uh. I knowthat there's a desire for one, and
I know there's got to be morepeople like me that don't necessarily want to
drive to Austin when we can celebratehere and we have a desire to do
it here. So that was oneof the first things that I just saw.
It was we don't have that here. Is there a way we can
make it happen? And after talkingwith all the leadership and they sat down
(17:32):
and agreed it was something they wereinterested in, wanted to do, and
that we could make it happen inthat short period of time, we went
to work to make it happen.And you did. You did. I
want to clarify because we did talkabout this last time. I want to
make sure and bring this up.You did receive a good deal of support
from city staff, fire, youknow, police, et cetera. Were
(17:53):
they were very much bought into theidea, right absolutely, because that was
the first thing that I did wassay, can I meet with everyone at
one time and just ask is thisgoing to add undo burden, undue pressure
on our police, on our fire, on our public works team, on
our parts and reg team. Isit something that you find value in?
(18:15):
Is it something that we could do? And they all said yes, and
that's how we moved forward. Okay. So in addition to mlkay, I
think you also spearheaded Juneteenth, right, Okay, So help me understand from
that perspective. Obviously you're creating someopportunities for community involvement. Absolutely, is
(18:36):
there a bigger vision there? Like, again, I know that one of
the reasons and correct me if I'mwrong if I speak out of turn here,
but one of the reasons that youwere interested in doing MLKA and Leander
was well, the only other placeI can really go to do this is
Austin thirty two thirty three miles parkingblah blah blah. Right, so you're
(18:56):
like, Okay, we can dosomething here, right, and then so
you basically create an event in thecity of Leander, and then you complement
that event with the Juneteenth event.So from a do you have a vision
there of like a larger opportunity tocreate some draw in the city like this
(19:17):
could be could have some potential economicimpact as well, right right, And
that would be the goal with anyof our events is to make sure they
do have economic impact, especially withthe Juneteenth. We've you know, the
planning committee has met several times andtalked about is there a bigger concert series
we could bring where we could sellout our hotel, where we could make
(19:37):
sure that we encourage people to goeat at our restaurants and just invest back
in our actual city from that event, drawing people from other parts of the
state. And we hope to dothat at some point. But really it's
about community engagement. That was oneof the things I ran on the first
time. And when I chuckle alittle bit when you say, because I've
(19:59):
heard it, we want to keepLeander small, We want our small town
feel and that's great, but oneof the ways for us to accomplish that
is through community engagement. The biggerthe city gets, the more community engagement,
in my opinion, becomes important becausepeople need to feel connected to their
city, need to feel connected tothe goals of the city, need to
(20:21):
feel connected to our fire and policeand feel comfortable that they are keeping them
safe. Like, there's a lotto be said for community engagement, and
so that's a huge part of whythese events allow us to reach different segments
of our community bring it together.And that's what I was going to say.
When we have these types of events, and there's a number that have
(20:41):
taken place in the last few yearsthat are new, like just the Dawali
is new, you know, andthat's not a city event, but it's
happening in the city, right,and it's bringing together a lot of people
to learn, right, right,And I mean I would make the argument
that you know, hey, thecity should be involved in those events at
some level of not directly sponsoring themor you know, directly behind the effort
(21:04):
to have them put on, becauseall of those events create an opportunity for
to your point, community engagement,but also community exposure, right, yes,
Because the the idea of a communityis you know, familiarity with your
neighbor, right to know who wholives next door, you know who lives
(21:26):
down the street and who lives aroundthe corner, and you know and that
that just kind of expands if youhave kids here, it's like who do
my kids go to school with?Right? And and from that perspective,
I think that's there's a great opportunityin Leander. I've always found and I've
you know, I've been here aboutsix years, but I've always found it
to be a very welcoming city overall. Like you know, generally, my
(21:51):
experiences have been, you know,people are open, and they're they're they're
happy to help, and you knowthey're looking to you know, a lot
of that because of small business,right, because there's a lot of small
business in Leander, so people area little bit more in tune. I
would say, just to like acustomer service model, a servant leadership right
(22:12):
from the individual businesses. They maynot call it that, but that's kind
of what they're doing, right,And I know that that's also one of
the things that I think you werecampaigning on, right, was like a
servant leader model. It makes adifference and the way you serve others.
Right. So in a servant leadermodel, for those who maybe are uninitiated
or maybe don't know that term,I don't want to presume everybody knows who
(22:33):
we're talking about. Essentially, theidea is the work that you do is
not for yourself but for others,right, and you receive your reward or
your come up into however you wantto frame that, from the experience of
others have and the success of theother staff. You're not worried about yourself
in other words, right, youdo what you do so that for the
(22:56):
greater good or again, however youwant to frame that, it's not for
yourself, like you take yourself outof the equation. Right, Well,
it goes back to what you said. Not everybody can has the ability to
do those things. So if youknow you have that ability, you use
it to bring folks together. Andin your experience, again you've put together
a couple of events, and there'sother things that we can talk about on
(23:18):
council tune. We will, butyour experience has been really a lot of
diverse voice within that. Right.It's absolutely it's not just the African American
community that it's involved here, there'speople from multiple areas. I've seen it
because I think I did an interviewwith one of your pastors last year,
(23:38):
probably yes on MLK SO and thatwas interesting because the people that I was
talking to in that process were allover the place. You know, it
wasn't just one community, no,and I think people tend to associate one
community, but the civil rights moveand impacted our whole country. It didn't
(23:59):
just impact one group of people,right, it changed things for everyone.
When you talk about Juneteenth, that'sTexas history, right, Like, that's
not just one group of people,like that is we are talking about Texas
history. So it impacts all ofus. So it's always important to me
to bring a diverse group of peopleto the table. People from different backgrounds,
(24:19):
different walks of life, different religiousbeliefs, no religious beliefs, people
with different familial statuses. Like,everybody has something from their circle of influence
that they can bring that can helpus be better. And so I want
to hear from all of it ifI have the opportunity. Yeah, And
I think that's an important point tomake again, just from the perspective of
(24:41):
the way that you pursue leadership inthe city. To talk about the council
positions, and we talk about thiswith most of the candidates, if not
all of them, is that youknow, it's a it's an it's a
citywide representation absolutely, right, Soyou're not you know, segmenting the city
into four, you know, districtsor anything along those lines. Conversation for
(25:03):
another day, maybe we should,but right now it's it's it's at large,
and so you have to be ableto interact with at least thirty nine
square miles of people, right orlike you, you really should And we
talked about this before. For memaking decisions at the end of the day,
(25:25):
is it in the best interests ofLeander? Is it in the best
interest of our citizens? That hasto be my baseline for making decisions,
right, and that helps keep youon the straight and narrow that you're representing
the city right, right, Andsee you are the Queen of Seguees.
I mean you do a really goodjob with that. So yeah, because
that's where I was going with thisis it's about representation, and this is
(25:48):
my way of looking at it.Every council position is essentially running for mayor
without the title. Right, themayor is the only race where someone's saying
I want to be at the headof the table, right. Everybody else
is saying I want to be atthe table. So in our government and
our governance here in the City ofLeander. That's how it works. And
(26:12):
when you go and you do anykind of researcher, if you look at
the way that the that the charteris set up, it's the citizens of
Leander at the are at the top, and then you know, the council
serves the citizens and then the counciladvises the staff. Right at the end
of the day. This is avolunteer position. Okay, it's like it's
(26:36):
like any committee assignment. You're notgetting paid for this, right, not
in our city, we are notright, And so it's important to understand
that, in my opinion as avoter, that you really this truly,
truly is really a representative type governance, Like these are people who are speaking
(26:56):
for you, people who are speakingfor your interests, right, which is
why it's so important that people getinvolved and stay involved. And believe me,
I have three kids. I getit. It is easy to disconnect
and just say I want to goto work, I want to go home.
I got a few my kids,I got my business to runt like,
I get all of that. Butwhen you have a chance to plug
(27:19):
in and know what's happening, it'sreally important because these folks have been elected
to represent you, and if there'sa problem, we don't live all over
the city. We live in ourneighborhoods, just like you live in yours.
But if there's an issue happening,make us aware, send an email,
come to a meeting, have apublic comment, like there are ways
to get involved and plug in sothat we can make sure we continue to
(27:42):
represent your interest as best we can. Yeah, and I think plugging in
is is I would say tune in, but that's right I do with this,
but or listen up or lean inanyway lead. But yeah, So
one of the one of the thingsthat I try to do with this podcast,
and one of the one one ofthe areas that I really try to
(28:03):
stress is just the involvement as aas a voter in the city you know
where. Again, we're at likeeighty nine thousand people in this city.
Little more now, yah, yeah, Okay, so I'm gonna start saying
ninety two. It's like five ninetyfive, close to ninety four and some
chains. Wow. Okay, no, I'm out of that loop. But
(28:25):
okay, so let's see we're closeto one hundred thousand were we are We're
already close to one hundred thousand,and I know when I first moved here,
the conversation was, well, youknow, we might be at one
hundred thousand by twenty twenty five,you know, so it's a lot faster
than what a lot of people thought. Yes, the point I'm trying to
make here is that they're with thatmany people in the city. It's key
that you get involved from the very, very most simple exercise of civic duty
(28:49):
is just vote, registered to vote, and then vote. There's still,
I believe, an opportunity to registerto vote. I think that's until how
you have it by the days beforethe election. Okay, okay, so
and the election is May fourth,fourth, so April fourth ish, like
I don't know I should know this, I don't right now, but yeah,
(29:11):
so keep your eye on that,and you know that week of April
first, you know, you shouldbe registered to vote already. If you're
not, do it now. Youcan go to vote on the ender dot
com. I have links to allof the registration mechanisms that you need.
You don't even have to literally fillin a form. It's simple, it's
very very easy to do. Youcan check your registration status there as well.
(29:33):
And then if you're new to Texas, if you just moved here,
I think it's you have to bea resident, an official resident for thirty
days, and then you can registerto vote. And usually when you update
your driver's license you get the optionto your vote registration. Can you move
here? So part of what wetry to do here is again expose you
as a listener or viewer to youknow, who is making themselves available to
(29:56):
represent you and give you an ideaof who they are and what they've done.
And but the other piece of thatis to vote. Like that's the
point, get out there and vote. We have a paltry number of people
who actually end up voting at theend of the day. It was,
if I remember correctly, the lastelection, was around five point three percent
(30:18):
of the total registered voters. That'snot even the people who live here,
that's just the people who took thetime to go register to vote, right,
which statistically it's between seventy and eightypercent in the state of Texas.
Now, whether that's reflective of Leanderper se, again, I'm speculating on
some statistics that I'm familiar with,but I just don't have them in front
(30:38):
of me. But we need wejust there needs to be more of that.
And if you if you're not doingthat, then you're you're losing an
opportunity to express a direction at thevery very minimum. Right, you may
not be talking to Nicole on adaily basis, may not have issues that
(31:00):
need to be addressed, but Nicoleis working and we'll talk about this.
There's two council meetings a month,yes, right, what did we say
last time? There's like fourteen agendaitems on pretty much every a little more
so usually we have which is toomany? That last time it's too many,
(31:22):
like you know, ten to fifteenthings on consent agenda and then we
usually have six to eight additional thingsnow sometimes more. When we when I
first got elected, our meetings wererunning into like eleven pm at night.
Yeah, I used to use themto go to sleep. Yeah, twelve
am at one meeting it was likeafter one a Yeah, I remember that
one and I was just like,oh my gosh, like and that's a
(31:45):
lot again. You know, youhave your business, yes, right,
and you you work all day longand then you know you spend you know,
I'm not going to presume how muchtime you spend, but you do
spend time prepping for those meetings,reading through whatever the staff is prepared for
you to you know, to beready, and then you go to the
meeting and then you're there for anothersix hours. Right. Yeah, that's
(32:06):
a lot. It is a lot, and it's for three years and that's
what we find. Yes, I'lltry to bring it. I'll try to
set it back up. So ifI remember correctly prior to you deciding to
open up your business, for youto find hair care products that you were
looking for or you know, anybeauty supplies that you were looking for,
it's like a twenty minute drive orsomething like that, right, Yeah,
(32:29):
it was actually longer. Okay,so I didn't fully remember it, but
that's okay. Yeah, we would, you know, looking around how much
Leander has grown. I was talkingto my husband. I was like,
it's crazy that we have to leaveour community to go get things that we
need for our daily care of ourhair. And there's got to be something
we can do about that. Andhe agreed, and so we decided to
(32:53):
start Lander Beauty Supply. But yes, I was driving upwards of forty minutes
to another city to buy the typeof shampoo and conditioner and things that I
needed just for my daily haircare becausethose type of products weren't necessarily offered at
HB or at Walmart. They mayhave one or two products, but they
don't have everything you need. Sonow you're running around to multiple stores to
(33:16):
get the basic things you need.And I was like, we shouldn't have
to leave our own community and spendtax dollars elsewhere and invest in someone else's
community. There's got to be away for us to do that right here.
So that's how we came up withthat idea. And how long have
you been The store has been openfifteen months now, so a little bit
(33:36):
more than a year. Yeah,how's that experience? Like we talked a
little bit about this the last time, so your experience as a business owner?
What I hear when I have conversationswith small business in Leander and through
various committees that I've served dow inthe city, there's an undertone of Leander's
(33:57):
hard to work with. It's ahard city to work with. And we
kind of listen out a little bitmore last time we talked about it.
So your business you were going toan established mall strip mall, right,
established location and just basically renting aspace. So your need for you know,
(34:20):
permissions and certificates and all the thingsthat you need to open a business
with were lessened because of that.Right. Yeah, I think educating people
on the different ways to get inbusiness is important, and that's something that
you know as a council member.I'm open to meeting with people. I
meet with business owners all the time. Now. People will come by the
store and ask me questions, andI'm always open to talk about what my
(34:44):
experience is. But I fully recognizethat anytime you have a bureaucratic organization,
there are going to be some challengessometimes, right, and things that have
to be overcome to get accomplished whatyou need to get accomplished. But my
process was different, and I saythat it was different not because I'm a
council member, just because of thepath that I chose to open my business,
(35:05):
and because I was not physically buildinga new facility and I wasn't purchasing
a facility. I rented a facilityand my landlord went through the permit process
under his umbrella for all of theunits that he manages, and so my
process was different. I didn't haveto meet with the fire, they met
with fire and just let me know, hey, your certificate of occupancy is
(35:30):
approved, or hey we got tomove the sprinklers, so it's going to
take longer for you to move in. It was things like that, so
not so much me physically walking throughthe permit process. Now where I did
have an opportunity to work through thepermit process and I punted the ball on
that was for my fine for thebusiness. I went and found a sign
(35:51):
company and he asked, Hey,do you want to do your permit or
would you like us to do thepertmit? And I said, I'm going
to let you do that because you'rethe expert. I'm not an engineer.
I don't know all of the specificationsand dimensions of the sign, and I
don't have time. I'm running mybusiness, so I would prefer for you
to handle that for me, right. And I think one of the things
we talked about was, you know, with that, you had an opportunity
(36:16):
to go into a relatively established space, and you know, I'm sure that
you did all of the due diligenceon that from a location, because you
know, small business, it's alwayslocation, location, location, it is
so but it brought up a reallygood point because a lot of times when
you hear that conversation, it's context. Right. So as a small business
(36:38):
owner, if you're going into anestablished environment or an established location, there's
far fewer hurdles for you. I'mnot saying there's not any, but there's
far fewer hurdles for you to haveto overcome as a small business owner.
And the conversations that are framed asit relates to Leander are typically more of
(37:01):
the developers saying, hey, thisis an onerous, you know process,
Like we have trouble getting through this. Some of it is on purpose and
some of it is unintentional. Right, And we've done things as a city
to encourage understanding the process so thatyou can move through that process quicker.
(37:24):
Since we got elected our council,you know, our Development Services Department has
now had developer meetings where they meetonce a month so talk about what's working,
what's not working, and so we'vetried to listen to the community and
say, Okay, what can wedo to make this process smoother. We've
had some updates to our ordinances andcodes so that things can move a lot
(37:46):
more smoothly, and as far assmall business, typically, what I hear
is after a business is open challengesthat they have for marketing and signage,
and so we've tried to address thatwith the news sign ordinance update that hadn't
been done in a while. Sothat got approved several months ago, and
then now we left our sales roomto update that even further to say,
(38:09):
okay, every six months, let'sreview it and say is this working?
Is this not working? What arewe hearing from small business owners? I
shared with you at that time,I had an incident where I had super
flags in front of my business becausemy particular location. While location is key,
I got the last spot that wasavailable. So I'm behind the front.
(38:32):
You cannot see me from the road, so no signage and no visibility,
no visibility from the road. It'sjust a matter of people want the
service that we provide so they findus. And so that incident with the
swiper flags. Now it's a partof our sign ordinance, but now figuring
out is it working. Do weneed to do something even more proactive to
(38:53):
help small business be successful and havevisibility in a way that we didn't consider
for And that's why having all thosediverse people at the table. Makes a
difference when you have people making decisionsmaybe that aren't in a particular community.
You may not know and it's nothingmalicious, it just may not be a
part of your experience. And ifpeople don't speak up, send you emails,
(39:16):
make calls, and if people don'thave the ability to be specific,
because sometimes it's just easy to sayI don't like it, m it's a
little bit harder to like drill downon what it is specifically you don't like,
right, and then what you wouldlike to see in right, right,
like the why. I mean,it's always it's always the why,
Like, well, why don't youlike it? Right? And what would
(39:37):
you do about it? And whatwould we do differently? And then have
that conversation. So that that makesme want to ask you, have you,
in your opinion, have you seenprocess improvement in your tenure over the
last three years? Like again,you know there's a lot going on,
(39:59):
you know there's so you're in agrowing city, you know, expanding population,
a lot of new growth, alot of new development, a need
to expand the economic drivers for thecity. Right, You're going from essentially
a bedroom community which is highly relianton property taxes and you're adding in a
(40:22):
component of business taxes, of ofrevenue that's generated off of class what is
a Class C and Class A typeestablishments commercial right, And there's a limitation
to that in Leander because again there'sthere's concerns about the water and the infrastructure,
(40:44):
the development costs for you know,going from zero to something, right,
that's expensive, that can be moreexpensive. It is more expensive.
Right. So when you when youstep into that role and you're part of
that conversation on a regular basis,how in your opinion, you know,
how has this council and with throughyour efforts, how do you feel you've
(41:07):
impacted that to the positive? Ithink the most important thing we've done is
focus on water. Water has beenthe focus because if we don't feel like
we have capacity, we're not goingto attract those big economic businesses that want
to come here and do business andmove their hair quarters here. We have
to have the infrastructure in place.And one thing I love to tell people,
(41:30):
and I don't think they realize,when we're dealing with water or other
natural resources, it is a complicatedand cumbersome process to get through, especially
when you have multiple entities that areworking together to resolve it, and it
just takes longer. If I decideto do something for my business, I
(41:51):
decided and I go handle it.If I decide to do something for my
family, we can make a decisionpretty quick and turn the ship around.
It's not that easy when you aredealing with the lives of one hundred plus
thousand people. When you're dealing withthat times three different cities and three different
entities. So for example, youknow, I've heard comments, well,
(42:13):
they need to hurry up and fixthe piping for bcr UA, not realizing
that we ordered the pipe over ayear ago. It took nine months to
get it in. So it's nota matter of not wanting to work quicker.
Things just take longer when you're dealingwith some of these these issues.
So for me, the most importantthing we can do to impact economic development,
(42:37):
and it may not be an instantaneousresponse that you see right away,
but was really to focus on infrastructureso that we can pull in some of
those large and mid sized businesses becausewe have the infrastructure to provide services right
right. And so when you talkabout that, then the vision is not
not you know today, it's tomorrow. Right, there is some today because
(43:00):
I believe Leander has an amazing smallbusiness community. We have done an amazing
job in cultivating that, and thesmall business owners that are here are just
such amazing people and dedicated to supportingother small business and even the residents here
like are looking for opportunities to supportsmall business. I see it every day
in my business. But because ofthat, I think we have a strong
(43:22):
economy that way. But if wewant to expand, and we do,
we really do have to think longterm. What are some of the things
that have to be in place todaythat we're planning for today that makes a
difference in three years. We haveto be thinking about that. Was that
an education process for you as well? I mean, again, I don't
want to assume that you know,you didn't think that way, but you
(43:44):
know, once you had the exposureto the actual position and the conversations that
took place and the council agenda itemsthat all start to address these things.
To your point, it's a verycomplicated, complex, almost sometimes convoluted process,
(44:05):
right, And there's a lot ofdifferent not only a lot of moving
pieces, there's a lot of movingpieces, right, moving pieces and to
wrap your mind around it. Iwas able to get a grasp of it.
Like I said, I think mycorporate career helped me do that.
My past experience for the last twentyplus years with different nonprofits and them navigating
financial campaigns and different things like that, I was able to get my hands
(44:29):
around it and understand what was happeningand what needed to happen. And it
just made me even more intentional aboutasking very good questions, doing your research
ahead of meetings, making sure youunderstand timelines and that everyone is held accountable
to clearly outlining what they plan todo. And then you make sure you
(44:51):
show up and keep track of timelinesand when change orders come that you're actually
reviewing them and making sure that it'snot sending off off but and if it
is, that there's an explanation forit, because we got to be able
to explain that to our public.So it just made me be even more
intentional about the review work that Ido ahead of time. So now looking
(45:14):
back at the last three years,help us understand what motivates you now to
continue to do that. I mean, that's a pretty big commitment. At
the end of the day. Thefirst three years and now you're saying I
want to do this again. Ithink that I'm in a unique position as
a business owner, as a wife, as a mom, as somebody who
(45:35):
has been a committed community volunteer formany, many years, and as someone
who has been here for ten plusyears and seeing just how quickly the city
has changed. I think I havea unique perspective to bring and my voice
at the table will continue to helpus to grow in the right direction and
continue to put things first that needto come first, and most importantly that's
(45:58):
taken care of Leander well with thatand keeping an eye on our agenda.
Yes, today, I know youhave to go, so I want to
make sure and keep us other time. But thank you again, And I
really really appreciate you making the extraeffort to come back and red and redo
the take right and Nicole's It's reallya very generous thing to do, because
(46:22):
I you know, this is justa passion project. Yeah, but I
think it's helpful and I think itserves a purpose in our community to get
some of these conversations out there rightright, just to help kind of have
that conversation. Because I have aunique opportunity to sit down with people like
you, Whereas a lot of peopleeither maybe because they don't have the time,
(46:43):
or they're shy or whatever, theywouldn't do that, right. So
that's kind of how I look atthis. It gives people an opportunity for,
you know, for me to havea nice, casual conversation, talk
about a few things. We don'tavoid topics, We talk about them in
a very reasonable manner and help peopleunderstand, you know, what makes you
tick. Well. I appreciate youdoing this and the reason why I'm willing
(47:04):
to come back. It's important thatpeople get out and vote. And I
often I don't think that people don'tvote because they're irresponsible or they just refuse
to do it. People don't know, people don't have access to the information.
It's hard when you see political signsgo up everywhere to know, well,
what's happening now the political bloom becauseyou know primaries were in March,
(47:24):
so you see signs again, youknow about November, like, what's happening?
Why is it happening? Right?And then you don't know exactly where
to go access information that is fairand so I appreciate this opportunity to present,
you know, my candidacy, whatI'm about, the work that I've
done, and what I want todo going forward. Okay, so again
(47:45):
an excellent segue. Help people understandwhere they can find information. I love
it about you, like, what'syour website, what's your socials, et
cetera. So here's my shirt,I have a cure code. That's there,
but you can go to Nicole Thompsondot com. That is our website.
Has all the information about the workthat I've done in the past,
(48:06):
what my goals are if should Ibe reelected in May, and then some
personal information about me and my familyand how we chose Leander and why I'm
here and all the good things Iwant to do. Awesome. Awesome.
So when we complete the vote inLeander series, I'm going to put links
up to each of the candidates.I'm going to wait till we have all
of the candidates represented it to makeit fair for everybody. So I'm not
(48:29):
giving anybody any kind of like advantage. You can find stuff quicker, now,
No, that's I'll be fair aboutthat. But again, thank you
so so very much. Thank youfor being here, and I hope this
is something that you as a memberof the public at large here in Leander
appreciate. Let me know if youdo, let me know if you don't.
If there's something I can do better, help me understand what that is.
(48:51):
But in the meanwhile, go tovote vote in Leander dot com.
I should remember my own website andnot going. There's a lot going and
find out, you know, someof the some of the basics of how
this works. There's there's information thereagain on like how our government here in
Leander is structured and what you canexpect from that perspective. And remember,
(49:14):
folks, most most of all,I think to me, this is probably
one of the most important things thatI try to stress. Take the time
to get yourself registered, take yourtime to get to the polls, and
remember at the end of the day, the end of the day, I'll
edit that one out. At theend of the day. These folks are
serving you, they representing you,and they're doing it because they have a
(49:36):
vested interest in the long term benefitof the citizenry of Leander. They don't
get paid. There's no one makinga lot of money being a council member
or mayor here in Leander. That'snot that's not how we work. And
it's important that you understand that,especially if you're new, because you might
have a different impression of how thingswork because some cities around here are a
little different. But with that wewill wrap this one up again. Thank
(50:00):
you so much y'all. May fory'all next time. Bye bye, no
(51:04):
no m a a man
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