The elections are over and we
finally have the full council seated and I think we have some great
people on council. Still, this is basically a new City Council. Lucy
Gonzales now has the longest current service with just over 2 years
and Tommy Hiebert has the most council experience, having served 6
years in the early 1990’s. The majority of the council is just
starting to learn the job.
There will be an adjustment
period as the council and city hall culture come to grips with each
other. They will both be changed. This is challenging enough but is
made even more challenging because we are also in the middle of the
budget cycle. New council members have to hit the ground running and
deal with policies and decisions handed down by their predecessors.
The draft budget online currently sits at 42 pages. By the end of
September that will grow to over 300 pages of dry, boring tables and
numbers and descriptions. They will have to rely on city staff and
staff will do the bulk of the leg work on the budget. At the same
time they will have to deal with all the little (and not so little)
issues and problems that make a council persons life uniquely
interesting. And they will have to learn who and what they can trust,
and build that trust both inside and outside City Hall.
Most of the councils job will
be balancing the wants, needs, and goals of City Hall with the
community that is the City of San Angelo. The community needs to
economically strong and healthy. City hall should be frugal and
efficient. The community needs to grow and thrive and be livable and
be a community. City hall needs to be able to support and sustain the
changes that happen within the city. The city as a whole needs to be
resilient. It needs to be able to adapt to those unknown events that
can break a fragile community.
City council and city hall
can’t do that on their own but they have to do their part and they
have to keep these broad, but seldom stated, goals in their focus.
All of these goals and objectives need to be balanced so that a
healthy community can be passed on to future generations. San Angelo
sprang up shortly after Ft. Concho was established roughly 150 years
ago. It would be wonderful if in another 150 years our descendants
were living here in a prosperous, comfortable thriving community, and
this is not some archaeological site where college students are busy
writing papers on what went wrong.
I will expand on these thoughts
more in the future. For now, I just want to welcome the new (and not
quite as new) members to the city council. You’re in for quite a
ride. Good luck. You’ll need it.