A Pflugerville for everyone
People move here because you can still buy a house on a normal salary and be ten minutes from a good park. I want that to hold for the next round of families, and for our retired neighbors who’ve been here since the nineties and are now on a fixed income.
What I’ll work to accomplish
- Rework water rates so bills come down now for households using less than 10,000 gallons a month. Lower the base charge and raise the rate per thousand gallons above 10,000.
- Hold contractors to their deadlines. Where contracts include liquidated damages for missed completion dates, collect them — and put the money toward paying down water debt early, which lowers annual debt service and lets us keep cutting water rates.
- Keep lowering rates for families as we pay down water infrastructure debt.
- Make a no-new-revenue budget the default. Instead of settling on a tax increase and then deciding how to spend it, start with what the city needs and raise revenue by that much and no more.
- Support the housing mix that keeps teachers, first responders, and retirees in town.
Invest in our future
Pflugerville continues to grow, and we need the infrasturcture to match it. Early is expensive, with higher interest, and late costs a premium as well as we play catch up. I will ensure we make smart, timely investments in infrastructure so we have what we need when we need it - neither too early or too late.
What I’ll work to accomplish
- Fund police, fire, and EMS so response times hold as we grow.
- Tie street, drainage, and traffic work to where the rooftops are going up. Widen the roads before the houses arrive, not after. That is how we get ahead of congestion instead of chasing it.
- Put big projects out to real competitive bid, use the low-interest state and federal loan programs we qualify for, and make sure every contract protects the city if a completion date slips.
- Put contingency ordering in writing, so we don’t get caught flat-footed waiting on parts for critical projects.
- Protect and preserve our parks, trails, and library.
Transparency and accountability
Staff at City Hall work hard to keep this city running, and residents should get to see that work. The information exists: we just need to provide it to the people. A resident with a job and kids should be able to work out what the city is about to spend their money on, and why, in ten minutes or less.
What I’ll work to accomplish
- Publish a plain-language budget summary every year. Where the money comes from, where it goes, one page. Put it on a landing page on the city website with every prior year next to it.
- Publish citywide water consumption daily on a live dashboard, in aggregate,to protect personal identifiable information.
- Finish building out the city’s capital-projects reporting page (clear.gov) into the one-stop source for contracts, change orders, and timelines — with the key terms, the cost, and the reason for each contract, and no gaps.
- Support a mandatory 5-year budget forecast and capital-projects reporting.
- Hold open office hours, and answer every email.
Dollars and sense
Every dollar that goes to interest is a dollar that doesn’t fix a road. I'd use my accounting knowledge, and financial acumen to ensure we are getting the best rates, possible, only borrowing what we need, as we need it, and taking advantage of every state and federal progra we can to reduce the interest burden on taxpayers.
What I’ll do
- Sponsor a written ordinance requiring draw-as-you-go financing on capital projects, so the city only borrows what it needs as the work is done, with any exception taking a separate council vote.
- Investigate any low-interest state and federal loans we may qualify for, the way the city did on the wastewater plant.
- Push to use water/wastewater surplus to pay down callable debt early or build a rate-stabilization reserve, to lower the amount rates have to cover.
- Support a citywide operational efficiency audit to find savings before asking taxpayers for more.
- Ask what a project costs to run and maintain over twenty years, not just what it costs to build, and publish that number in a fact sheet before the vote.
- Protect our credit rating. Cheaper borrowing leads to lower taxes for all of us!