Patrick J. Cloutier won a special election for McKinney City Council Place 2, an at-large seat, on Jan. 15.

Cloutier took the spot previously held by Frederick Fraizer, who announced his candidacy for Texas House of Representatives District 61 in October.

Cloutier is the co-founder of Legacy Planning Group, a financial advisory firm located in downtown McKinney since 1998. He has also served on the McKinney Economic Development Corp. board, the McKinney Zoning Board of Adjustments and the 2017 bond committee.

Community Impact Newspaper asked Cloutier what is in store as he steps into his new role.

What are you looking forward to most during your time on council?


I look forward to addressing the issues that are here in McKinney. There's a few issues that I bring with me to the council that I'd like to gain resolution on. One of them is that we don't have a grocery store that's south of [US] 380, east of Hwy. 5, west of Airport Road and north of Eldorado [Parkway]. It's a big area that doesn't have a grocer. Now to the extent we have poverty, which we do, a lot of that poverty is in that quadrant. And to the extent we have people that don't have a car to get to a grocery store, chances are excellent they live in that quadrant. There's a big group of us that have long wanted to bring a grocer there. I want to have a combination of the city and the [McKinney Community Development Corp.] commission a scientific study to find out what kind of demand is there for a grocery store there.

The other thing that I want to do is I want there to be more affordable housing here in McKinney. Affordable housing is a slippery word because it doesn't define the number. But let me roughly define it as when I moved to McKinney, we were a family of five. My wife didn't work outside the home. I made a decent income but nothing great, and I want those people to be able to get a foothold here in McKinney. To the extent we have property owners, they are more invested than renters. Renters can be invested but as a group, just not as much. The federal government has a program in the 75069 ZIP code that if you're a first-time buyer, there's a program that many can qualify for that is 0% down and no PMI. PMI in the mortgage world is private mortgage insurance. That can run a few hundred dollars a month as part of your house payment, but that doesn't happen in this federal deal. So I'd like to see townhomes or condos built in the [75]069 so that we can turn people who are renters into property owners here in McKinney. As a financial adviser, I know that the genesis of wealth in this country for most of us is homeownership, and that's harder in McKinney right now. And it's going to be harder forever than it was when I came here. That's a function of having a good city, but I'd like to help bridge that gap a little bit.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing McKinney over the next couple of years?

One of them is that we have an overall housing shortage. There's 9,200 homes in Stonebridge Ranch. Maybe four or five different days over the past two weeks, there's been zero for sale. I never thought I would live to see that in McKinney. In 2001, we had this tech bubble burst, and Nortel was a big employer. Lots of Canadian neighbors lived at Nortel, and all of a sudden they're all gone, and you’ve got a house for sale on every corner. We were used to that. We aren't used to this. But if we have a housing problem, we also have a labor problem. We're doing a great job in Texas and in Collin County and in McKinney of attracting businesses, but housing people is a different challenge, and that's something that we're going to have to address.


Another opportunity that I've been involved in off council and now I'll be involved on council is the redevelopment of east McKinney. We have a once-in-a-multigeneration opportunity to do some redevelopment there. That's an important challenge for McKinney to get that right. I really look forward to working with all the stakeholders there to work to get this done correctly.

What would you like to see from the residents that you represent?

I've lived the life of that busy guy in his 30s. When I moved here, I was not involved civically. I made a conscious decision to be involved in my business, my work and my girls' lives because I had one chance to raise those girls. So I purposely stayed on the sidelines. And I fully respect that parents have to do that. I have immense respect for what everybody's gone through with COVID[-19]. I'm so fortunate that I didn't have young children during this time, but what I want is a couple things. I want them to be engaged as much as their bandwidth will allow it. For those that do have the bandwidth to engage and be part of the solution, I firmly believe that God gave all of us unique abilities that we can use to bless others, and I see that so much in McKinney with my hundreds of friends that I respect, know and work with. And as we've gone from a town—when I moved here of 35,000—up to 206,000 now, I'd love to see more people become engaged on a civic level. I don't know what that means for every individual, but I know that the more people we have with unique abilities that step up to help that have the time to do it, the better the city is going to be.