George Dodson is running for Colleyville City Council Place 4.[/caption]
Place 4 is currently held by Jody Short, whose term ends in May.
Community Impact Newspaper sent Dodson a series of questions. His written responses, edited for publication style, are below.
1. Why did you decide to run for Colleyville City Council?
Me and my family have lived in Colleyville for 30 years and I have proven to be an energetic change maker for Colleyville for half of those years. I have been a proponent for dealing with issues that are important to improving citizens’ lifestyles in our city. My profession, as an executive IT management consultant with IBM and for my own company, involves investigations into complex operational situations for clients. I also served as a senior executive with IBM and Perot Systems managing large organizations and large budgets. In addition, I have a masters degree in statistics and a bachelors degree in mathematics. I have observed numerous situations that were appearing to become significant issues for our citizens. First, the water and sewer rates in Colleyville were becoming far in excess of the actual cost of the water for the city to deliver. Each year the city was transferring over $1.2 million to the general fund from the operations of water and sewer. Also, the pricing model of the water and sewer had ended up not recovering the cost of operations such that the city had to issue over $3 million in bonds to meet city’s needs. This and other issues such as the council ignoring citizens’ demands to stop approving high-density housing in Colleyville resulted in a total defeat of incumbents in the 2016 election for the city. I have been active in dealing with areas like the Tex Rail train coming through Colleyville, which will add pollution, noise and traffic to our city. I was named to the water and wastewater committee where I helped lead the report to the City Council to totally change the billing of utilities to recover the cost of operation and pass through the volume charges that the city pays to our supplier. This change has leveled out the payments, so that every customer pays for all the water they use, but they are not funding other city operations. I am also now the Planning & Zoning chairman and I want to help continue the significant changes the new City Council majority has brought to the city. I can use my extensive budget knowledge as well as the significant management expertise I bring to the council. I believe the council must represent the citizens and I will do so in a citizens first approach that Mayor Newton and the City Council have brought to Colleyville.2. If you are elected, what will you focus on?
There are always a larger number of issues a city the size of Colleyville has than the budget will allow us to deal with. The following are my top priority issues:- Streets—I want to make sure the City Council continues to speed up street repair by using economical methods that do not require tearing out hundreds of trees, changing the overall look of Colleyville and ignoring other major streets that have fallen into disrepair. We need solid base building of streets, that can be done for 20 percent of a total re-engineering of streets.
- Transparency—I want to continue the path the council has established on financial matters of the city and the council’s actions. I strongly support the new OpenGov financial reporting system, which will assist citizens in being able to track city spending and budgets more closely.
- Taxpayer protection—I will continue to focus on opportunities to reduce the budget by finding ways to conduct city activities more efficiently while still delivering quality core services like public safety and utilities. I will also work to reduce the tax rate to protect against the continually rising appraisal system of the state.
- Comprehensive plan—As chairman of the Planning & Zoning Commission, I led the Commission in adding modifications to the comprehensive plan that will help protect Colleyville from the push from developers and builders to increase housing density in Colleyville. The plan modifications were approved by the City Council in February. I will work as a council member to ensure that city controls will be implemented in the Land Development Code and zoning controls to ensure the standards will be implemented as defined. The past City Council had allowed developers to build more than twice that of the city standard of two houses per acre.
- Parks—I will work as a council member to look for opportunities to improve our public parks as well as looking for more land to add to our parks. Other services, such as the library, recreation and others, are critical to life in Colleyville and I fully support ensuring these services are maintained at the level required.
Mike Sexton and Chad LaPrelle have also filed for Place 4. Election day is May 6 from 7 a.m.-7 p.m., and early voting will run April 24-29 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and May 1-2 from 7 a.m.-7 p.m.
