Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
What were the day-one challenges you faced coming into office?
Well, the day-one challenge was obviously getting to know the staff [and] bringing them all together. And I wouldn't say a challenge, I would say that was an opportunity ... for us to meet them ... not just in this particular building, but also in the Nature Center, also in the [South Montgomery County] Community Center, we had a precinct-wide meeting and brought everybody in. And so that was nice, to really spend some time ... getting to know each other, and kind of just figuring out what everybody's vision is for what [Precinct 3 operations] is going to look like. So that was day one. And then ... week one was, obviously, getting your arms wrapped around what infrastructure projects do we already have underway or on the horizon.
What this is going to look like ... is—what we can do to help create mobility and traffic solutions as well as drainage solutions for the community. Then, I'll take that one step further; [in] month one ... we had a historic winter freeze or winter snow storm ... which was ... really exciting, because it was sort of like our first test, and kind of a pop quiz, almost. And I think that ... they aced it.
I think that anytime you're in public service as an elected official, you realize that crisis management is the most important thing that you do over and above everything else. I have been either fortunate or unfortunate, however you want to look at it, to have gone through several of these scenarios between [Hurricane] Harvey and COVID[-19] and Winter Storm Yuri. And so when you come to something like [Jan. 20] events, you're prepared for it. You're ready for it. You don't get caught off guard. But more than that is you trust your staff to go out and go do the work to take care of the community, and they did a great job.
What were the main takeaways from that day-one meeting?
The biggest one is just community engagement. How can we open the lines of communication back up with the residents? How can we be more accessible, not just to our residents, not just to our other elected officials, but also strategic partners? How can we then, through that accessibility, start collaborating with them about what's important to our businesses in the area, what's important to our residents. So when we have major projects that we're looking at, how can we communicate those projects and those ideas to our constituents and our neighbors and say, "Okay, what do you think about this?"
So really, it was setting the tone for the culture of the precinct that we want to be open and available, and have a dialog back and forth with all of those stakeholders, residents, strategic partners [and] other elected officials that we have partnerships with, whether they be in Montgomery County or even to some degree in Harris County, identifying all the stakeholders and saying, "OK, we need to establish relationships with them."
When it comes to the operations of the Precinct 3 Commissioner's Office, are there any particular areas you want to grow or expand over the next four years?
I haven't identified any areas yet that we need to grow the office, per se. What I will say is we know that The Woodlands is 50 years old. I mean, we just celebrated a birthday, and we know that Imperial Oaks and Benders Landing and Spring Trails and Harmony and Woodson's Reserve and Oak Ridge North, Shenandoah, all of those other areas in the precinct outside of The Woodlands, while they may not be, at least not all of them, as old, they have their own infrastructure needs as well.
So what we've got to balance is where do we need new infrastructure to help mitigate some of the congestion that these folks are dealing with? Then where do we need to go back and start replacing existing infrastructure? Because [Precinct 3] is just aging, we're 50 years old, and at some point you have got to start looking at replacing stuff.
Montgomery County commissioners are discussing a proposed road bond initiative for 2025; what needs have you identified?
We've visited with various people, whether they be engineering firms or architecture firms or community stakeholders ... in a proposed bond package, what can we do to help with some of that traffic and mobility? We know we have two different sets of needs. We know we have aging infrastructure in some areas, like in The Woodlands.
Intersection improvements, signalization improvements, ... but then we know we have some infrastructure needs in other areas that are going to help move traffic. That's new infrastructure. That's I'll give you a couple of examples, for instance, Rayford Road and [the Grand Parkway] at Rayford Road, 99 at Birnham Woods ... neither one of those have a dedicated right-hand turn lane. That's an area that we're going to look at hard and see if we can identify the room to put in a dedicated right-hand turn lane to try to move traffic through that intersection for those residents over there a little bit better.
We're going to look real hard at Robinson Road in Oak Ridge North, and can we help with the project that Oak Ridge North is doing at the Robinson Road and Hanna [Road] intersection? Is there a way that we can help with storage and maybe even extending some of those improvements to help move traffic through that area better? I think the big one is, can we take Townsend Boulevard from Rayford Road north to [the Grand Parkway].
That's a big endeavor, but ... for those folks that live along Rayford Road, they only have one way in and one way out, and so it's not safe if we have a natural disaster of some sort where they get bottled in, we can't get first responders down there. We can't get fire trucks, ambulances—they can't get out, because that's their only access.
What should Precinct 3 residents expect from the office going forward?
What they need to know about this office going forward is we're going to have a culture shift. So, we as an executive team, have really tried to put the message out, not only internally, but externally, that we're here, we're open, we're open for business, we're available.
We want to hear from people. We want to collaborate with them. We're going to be as transparent as possible with new projects coming online so that we can get feedback, and so really, what we want people to know is that we're open, we're open and we're available, and we're going to have a culture shift to be more collaborative with the community.
