Jack Cagle

What is the most critical issue in Precinct 4 right now?

Transportation and mobility are, at this time, the most critical issues we face. We have the Exxon plant that is coming in, and it is going to bring anywhere from 36,000 to who-knows-how-many additional individuals to the north portion of our county. That means we need to be able to tap those people into the Grand Parkway, to have our neighborhoods ready and to be able to service these individuals and the roads that come along with that.

What is your greatest challenge as a commissioner?

The greatest challenge and one of the greatest thrills is there is so much that is involved in terms of the services that we have. I have 315 or so of the finest employees anyone can imagine, and they are doing the work of 420 employees. They are giving double and triple the effort to carry a great project forward, and they are doing it with excellence. My job is to get in there and try to help them out. [I try to] find out what they are doing, find out what extra tools they need, encourage them and say thank you to them for the great work they are doing.

How do you plan on maintaining county services with ongoing budget constraints?

I first need to commend my staff and my predecessor for doing a very good job of preparing for these lean times. We did not have to have massive layoffs because we have been in a hiring "chill," and as the economy has slowed, we have not been hiring. We have had folks multitask.

How are we going to face the ongoing issues? We are just going to try to work with everybody and do more with less. As we just went through the mid-year review, we have our budget for the next year, and it is down. We are down 4 percent from the year before. That is a lot of money when you consider the size of our budget, but I think that our people are doing a very good job of adjusting. And we just have to make hard decisions.

Where would you like to see Precinct 4 in 20 years?

My 20-year vision of Precinct 4 is that whereas now we are spending $550 million in growth improvements and projects, I would like to see that [number] in terms of the billions.

We will build our roads in a way that not only saves you money, but they save us money in terms of our construction costs. And we are currently engaged in a number of projects in our county where we are using sustainable technology.

In 20 years, when you drive down our roads, you will get there quicker, and when you get there you will be happier because it will be beautiful along the drive.