Community Impact sat down with him to discuss how his past experience as city manager for the city of Terrell will help in his new role, learn what brought him to Argyle and see what plans he has for the future of the town.
Responses have been edited for length, clarity and style.
What are your top priorities as the new Argyle town manager?
I’ve used the phrase for a while now of being chief listener. One of the most important things is to be the kind of person who people feel comfortable talking to because I find that a lot of citizens have some nervousness about talking to people who work for the government and talking to their local town or talking to anybody who's in that official position. My notion and my philosophy is I'm going to be somebody who does a good job listening, not just to city staff, and not just to the elected officials. I want to do a good job listening to citizens and businesses also. So my number one thing is to just call myself chief listener and just live by that motto.
How will your past experience help you in this role?
I've spent 17 years in a high growth environment and dealing with growth and development. In rough numbers the city of Terrell went from, when I first showed up, being around 15,000 people to being over 23,000 people. So watching that growth, being the person in Terrell who was managing the development projects and trying to make sure we had good partnerships that were healthy for the city instead of what you often see in the Metroplex. You see unhealthy relationships with development that changes the character of the community.
It's this magic thing of saying “I want my town to be a place I still love 10 or 15 years from now.” Because too often we say we love our community, we've lived here for years, we've enjoyed it for years, and then, all of a sudden, people notice it's a great place. That's nice, we like it when people notice it's a great place, but so many people move in that it changes the character of the community.
And I think one of the things I've learned in my previous experience is, how do we maintain the character of the community during a period of growth? That's a giant challenge, and I think I've learned a lot of tools and tricks of the trade to make sure that Argyle can continue to be Argyle, even in the face of this massive growth that's in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
What brought you to Argyle and what excites you about this town?
I am a Denton High School graduate, so for me, it's coming home. I am a guy who when my parents first moved here to Denton County, we moved out in a little post oak forest, and so to be in the Cross Timbers and to be in the community that's done a wonderful job preserving the Cross Timbers and preserving the horse country, I just couldn't turn down that opportunity. I thought it was absolutely wonderful, and it's just a great place to relocate the family.
What are your long-term goals for Argyle?
The number one long-term goal is actually the short-term goal of making sure that there's a shared, common vision between the elected officials and the citizens, and then translating that into the future. When I drive down FM 407, I can see an Appaloosa, I can see lots of great horses, I can see people who are maintaining a rural lifestyle. Can we be 10 or 15 years from now, a community where you can still drive down FM 407 and see an Appaloosa and see some horses and see people continuing to live that kind of rural lifestyle? To me, that seems like that's a really good measure of success, and I'm trying to figure out what the common vision of the community is that can really translate that into not just a generality, but the specifics that really make it happen.
How do you plan to preserve Argyle’s small town feel amidst increasing development?
I just think that's the details of the day-to-day. The “how” is that every single day, I guarantee you, somebody will knock on the door in Argyle and say “I want to develop” and it's just a matter of having a good daily routine as a city and good practices with the rule book of development in this town and good communication with the town council, so that everybody's on the same page in communicating clearly to people who want to build new things.
What are some of the challenges in overseeing a town that's growing?
I think part of it is just partnerships with other entities. A lot of times people have the perception that the town or the city can do just everything under the sun. Well, you have to remember that the Texas Department of Transportation will make a tremendous difference in this city as they do things on FM 407, US 377 and I-35W. We have to have good communication with TxDOT. The same goes for Denton County, the school district, the water supply district and all of these myriad of developments, municipal utility districts and public improvement districts around. Part of the job of the town manager is to make sure we have good relationships with all those people around us, because it's not just the town. We need a lot of entities and partnerships that put us all on the same page.
Outside of work, what should residents know about you?
My wife and I got married in 1994. We have seven kids and four of them are out of the house. One of them just graduated from the University of North Texas and so we still have three at the house. We are just tickled to death to be able to come here and take the next chapter in life and have three kids graduate from schools around here. We're pretty excited about it.
What final thoughts would you like to share to Argyle residents about yourself or your new role?
I guess my first statement to anybody in Argyle is: pray for your city. It is a great thing to sit down and say "I thank God for the beautiful community that we have, for the beautiful trees here, for the rolling hills, and that's a blessing that we have.”
Outside of that, I think that the message to citizens is that Town Hall is open for citizens. I think Mayor Schmidt said it really well. You want to have a city that does a great job connecting with its citizens. To any extent that any citizen of Argyle or any business in Argyle feels disconnected from the city, my comment is, come see the new town manager. I want to be connected to you. I sincerely mean that and I'll sit down and chat with anybody because I'm gonna live by chief listener.
