In a special election Dec. 8, Buda Place 2 City Councilman Todd Ruge defeated Place 1 Councilman Ron Fletcher by a count of 159 votes to 126 votes for the position of Buda mayor.
City Council called the special election after former Mayor Sarah Mangham resigned Oct. 23, citing health reasons. Ruge holds a degree in finance from St. Edward's University and lives near downtown Buda. He answered questions from Community Impact Newspaper.
How will you manage growth without sacrificing Buda's "small-town charm?"
The small-town charm is really what drew my wife and I here. We live in the old town area. We want that charm to remain, and as a city, we can do that by being very selective on the types of businesses that we bring into town. One thing that we have done as a council is that we've instituted stricter building standards so that when things do come in, they're going to look like the area they're a part of. We've always had that in old town, but we've expanded that across the whole city.
Besides growth, what is the biggest issue facing the city?
I think there's two issues really. The first one being traffic, and that goes hand in hand with the growth. When we annex new land for neighborhoods and businesses and things like that, there's a price that comes with it. We do get the tax base, but we get more vehicles, and we don't have new roads. The other pressing issue is wastewater. We just completed a renovation and expansion of our wastewater facility, and then a few council meetings ago, we got a report that—guess what? Because of growth projections, we're going to have to expand that in seven or eight years.
