Loren Smith works with Tomball City Council and staff to help the city as it grows outward. Originally from Denver, Colorado, Smith earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Baylor University and now works with the Olsen & Olsen LLP law firm in downtown Houston. He has worked as a city attorney in several cities in the Greater Houston area, including Bunker Hill Village, Dickinson and Friendswood. He and his wife have two sons and live in Houston.

Smith has worked with the city through several major projects, including establishing zoning, facade and signage ordinances, annexing several new areas of land into the city limits and providing day-to-day legal advice to city staff and council members.

How long have you been working with the city, and what did you do before?

Our firm has been working with the city of Tomball for about 20 years or more, and I have been there for about five years. Before that, I worked in cities like Dickinson, Bunker Hill [Village] and Friendswood. The firm represents about 30 cities, but Tomball is the biggest city I work with.

How did you become a city attorney?

It’s kind of an interesting story; in my last year at Baylor, I needed a two-hour elective credit to complete my degree, and there was a new professor [who] was pretty popular teaching a class called Local Government Structure and Function. I thought, “That’ll be a good two hour class. I’ll probably never use it, but I’ll take it.” Then I ended up spending the next 25 years doing nothing but what that class was about.

What are some of the day-to-day challenges you face in your role?

A lot of the biggest challenges that we face are caused by the growth and some of the developers that are coming. We have various partnerships and agreements with developers that need to be managed and negotiated. Then we have things like the extension of Medical Complex Drive and the drainage channels and acquiring the land needed for those.

What does your job entail that most people do not get to see?

I spend quite a bit of time working with city staff and developers on the various agreements and getting them hashed out and working through the details before they even go before the City Council.

I was responsible for acquiring the right of way for Medical Complex Drive, which involved a couple of eminent domain proceedings to acquire the property. The same is true on the M118 drainage ditch the city is working on. So I have to file those papers and go to special commissioners hearings and handle those things all the way through.

I also get a lot of phone calls from city staff, including the city manager and assistant city manager, dealing with day-to day questions that come up.

What is the most interesting aspect of your job?

This is true in any city, but [in Tomball] you get to deal with interesting issues from time to time like when we were dealing with the sign ordinance and sign regulations, for instance. You get to deal with First Amendment or free speech issues. There aren’t a lot of places other than criminal law where as a lawyer you can practice and deal with constitutional issues, which I find to be interesting.

Dealing with developers is also very interesting. My role is there to protect and advise the city. It’s often a beneficial arrangement for both sides [when a developer comes in to work with the city], so it’s nice to be in a situation where both sides are benefiting from a transaction you’re involved in from a legal standpoint.

What are some legal challenges the city will face in the future?

Managing the growth as it continues is going to be important and that is done a lot of times through a zoning ordinance and how city planners and City Council envision that growth.

Zoning has only been in place in Tomball since 2008, so you have a city that was largely developed before zoning came in. So you have a lot of people trying to expand and, to me, [figuring out how to manage that in the city] is the biggest challenge going forward.