Exit interview: A Q&A with outgoing Denton Mayor Gerard Hudspeth

Answers have been edited for length, style and clarity.

What led you to want to run for mayor of Denton?

My dad has always been active here in politics [and was] on the school board. One of his friends was like, “Hey, you should run for council.” [I spent] three years on council from 2017-20. [In 2020,] I didn't feel like wholesale changes would be best for the city. I talked to the people who had been on council longer than me, and none of them were going to run who were similarly focused, so I threw my hat in the ring to try to continue down the path we were on to have that consistency.

What project or initiative are you most proud of spearheading during your terms?

It's really about city staff and giving them what they need because they're going to be there for 20, 30 years, hopefully. I’m most proud to give them the resources, tools and information they need to be successful and serve the city well. My job simply is to be eyes and ears and say, “I talked to some people, and here's a concern. Have we looked at it? What can we do to help them mitigate those concerns?”

What was the most significant challenge you faced in office?

That's where you get back to the votes and the larger projects and advocating. I tell people all the time, it's difficult to work with six people you didn't pick. I've lived in Denton my entire life, and you've had people on council who have been on council for four years and lived in Denton for five, so I'm talking to them about how we don't want to make the mistakes from the 1980s and their context is [COVID-19] pandemic forward. How do I communicate these lessons learned from living here to someone who wasn't here? That advocacy, that kind of debate and finding a solution [to find] what serves the community the best is a challenge.

Since you became mayor, what growth have you seen in the city?

The elephant in the room right now is the multifamily apartment complexes all over the place. I got that question from a fifth grader and one of the elementary schools I visited who asked, “Hey, what's with all the apartments?” That's a challenge that we're working through and best we can. From the other side of the coin, the Razor Ranch area has developed with Target and other retailers coming on board. The growth is undeniable around the airport and the energy center. To have the growth we have there helps us firm up our tax base, and [we want] continue to expand the airport because it's just a great, unique feature that Denton has. And you can't go without talking about [the master-planned developments with] Landmark and Hillwood, the Cole family and what that area will be like in southwest Denton. It's truly going to be an amazing gateway for the city.

Are there any scenarios where you look back and think, “I could have handled that differently”?

In a perfect world, I wish I would have had the ability to use relationships [for quiet zones] with the railroad. They’re still in process. I wish I would have had more opportunities to leverage relationships to get that further down the line and get us going there, because truly, it boils down to putting in a curb. Just so people can't drive around the arms of the railroad crossing and [the trains] don't have to honk their horn.

What advice would you give the next mayor of Denton?

I do believe it is truly best to focus on those projects that don't require a vote, like serving the city, serving staff well and providing information for them to work on. That would be the critical part for a future mayor to understand: Don't get caught up in buildings and stuff where you have to have consensus or where you got to work through the railroad community. All those things are good and worthy to do, but focus on the stop signs, the school zones, the curb fixes, the ADA accessibility, the things you can do every day with staff's help.

What’s next for you?

I want to continue to serve. I was blessed to be able to be appointed to the Civil Service Board by [Denton County] Sheriff [Tracy] Murphee. I've served in council before, but I hadn't had a chance to serve here in Denton County. We will certainly run for office. I ran for county commissioner, unsuccessfully by a few 100 votes, but we've taken a look at that, and [my family and I] will go back to the drawing board. For me, eyes wide open and just trying to see where our skill set best fits.

Anything else you would like to emphasize?

I'm big on prayer. The faith-based component can't be understated enough. In the first year and a half [as mayor] we had a world pandemic. Then there's a once-in-a-lifetime freeze with Winter Storm Uri. Then you had the George Floyd protests that happened. The Confederate monument came down. You had so many of these just kind of polarizing moments. Even if you look now with the [Woman’s Club] building, it's a 99-year lease, but the way faith would have it, I'm on council when that lease ends, and we have to have that conversation. There's just a lot of once-in-a-lifetime or unique experiences that we had to govern through, and I'm eternally grateful for the experience.