The Mayor and the other Stephenville city council members up for re-election have all announced they plan to seek additional terms. It’ll be interesting to see who else files for office. On the one hand, given the dislike the Mayor’s supporters have for those who question his policies, I won’t be surprised if at least two of the incumbents are targeted for defeat. But given the slimefests the elections of 2012 and 2014 proved to be, I can’t blame those who might otherwise be interested in service on the council if they decide to take a pass on this race.
Campaigns in which everyone runs unopposed are not unheard of—the most recent example of such a campaign was in 2013. In that case, the council legally cancelled the election and declared the candidates to be legally elected. We thereby saved time and money that would otherwise have been spent on election administration.
Yet it would be unfortunate if the campaign season about to commence were to end with nobody other than the incumbents seeking office and the campaign and election therefore cancelled. There are plenty of questions the citizens should ask of candidates—and of themselves as well—should the opportunities arise. The most important questions concern taxes, spending, and economic development. For example:
The voters have said in recent elections “no” to new taxes by electing council members pledged to oppose them, and by rejecting council candidates and members, myself included, willing to consider them. They’ve also said “yes” to more spending on economic development by voting to implement Prop 1, which mandates the council to divert sales tax revenue to spend on prospective and current businesses in Stephenville.
The advocates of Prop 1, you’ll recall, and as I’ve noted in the past, said that the funds would be spent on “infrastructure,” and would be generated by current economic growth, meaning that no cuts in existing programs would be necessary. These assertions, to put it charitably, were predictions that have so far been proven false. Cuts in city services had to be made to free up money for economic development projects.
The money spent so far has been in the form of corporate welfare—funds to help multibillion dollar companies train their employees, and a proposed tax break for a prospective restaurant. (By the way, council member Jerry Warren told the “newspaper” that the council’s vote to give an incoming restaurant a tax break was declared null and void since the council had to get a request from SEDA first; he also suggests restaurant operators come to the 1/5/16 council meeting when the issue will be discussed—something I’d recommend too, so they can learn why the council wants to give a competitor a tax break).
So voters should be asking who else will get corporate welfare, and what additional services will be cut to provide funds, should economic growth not produce enough new revenue.
The voters should also be raising more questions about the prospective new civic center the council is thinking about, focusing on where it’s to be located, what services it’s to provide, and, most importantly, how much it may cost and how it’s to be financed.
Leadership Stephenville (of which I’m an alumnus) has proposed securing private financing to pay for it. But what if the city council can’t raise all the necessary money through donations, then what? A bond election? And if the voters reject the bond election—after all, to pay back the money thereby borrowed, taxes may have to go up or more services may have to be cut—then what? By the way, I personally think that the voters should get a vote on financing if private funds can’t be raised, and if the voters reject a bond issue, the project should be put on the back burner, or in the deep freeze, unless and until the voters change their minds. That’s why I opposed the Proctor Pipeline project after the voters rejected it, but that’s me.
At any rate, while there may not be a real election this year if nobody files against the incumbents, should there be an election there’ll be plenty for the candidates to talk about—when they’re not dodging the flying slime.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville and taught politics and government at Tarleton since 1987. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990 to the present). He was Mayor Pro Tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Stephenville Rotary Club, and does volunteer work for the Boy Scouts of America. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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