As your Councilmember, I will continue to work for:
Smart Growth and Equitable Development
Smart Growth and Equitable Development
- Focus on strategic planning and funding for essential infrastructure needs.
- Identification of good bones development opportunities.
- Be inclusive of retired, single or family communities that are diversified and provide meaningful activities for all our citizens that include walk-ability, access to shopping, dining, provide work opportunities and access our parks and trail system.
- Be vigil towards and address weaknesses and strengths in our system to prepare as our City changes and grows.
- Continue to facilitate and promote value based land use systems that balances a good business model, maintains good neighborhood lifestyle design and protects property values.
- Seek solutions to continue an equitable taxation system , be vigilant towards debt service and continue to limit waste.
- Continue to limit and find good alternates to costly developer incentives and abatements.
- Research, audit, validate matters pertaining to City budget , financial planning, funding options, staffing, public safety and spending practices.
- Continue to identify and Improve City visibility , accessibility , and communication needs as our City grows.
- Continue to work with the City on a way to provide the line by line annual draft budget online so it is accessible to citizens for their understanding and feedback during public hearings.
- Strengthen our HOAs and Community Leadership to provide a base of support for Mansfield Citizens to have a voice.
My ongoing work for Mansfield and our Citizens
As Part of the City Council Team-
As Planning and Zoning Commissioner-
As a Member of the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee-
As a Member of the Construction Codes Board of Adjustments and Appeals-
As a Member of Mansfield Tree Board-
Fiscally Responsible and limit waste
While City Council's role is to make key decisions for the community’s standard of living… it is imperative that we include what local residents need and want, what they are willing and able to pay for, and what services they can expect to receive for their tax dollars.
As Part of the City Council Team-
- Staff and city council worked to overcome a longstanding organizational culture to foster a new mindset for empowerment of creativity, being more open minded, and view transparency as essential.
- Established our CORE Principles of our True North through: Noteworthy Essentials; Organizational Excellence; Remarkable experiences; “Together as one”; Healthy Economy. All that the City does is measured against these principles.
- Created our vision: “A vibrant City for People and businesses that value a world class experience, culture quality and a second-to- none level of community service in a hometown environment.”
- Joint meeting with P&Z, MEDC and MPFDC to establish and reinforce community wide expectations and goals.
- Initiated the HOA driven “Neighborhood Outreach program”
- Updated our procurement process, by adopting the “Mansfield First” business initiative to include local and Women and minority businesses. Also, to restructure that process for approval/payment
- When 45% of the Citizens said they wanted revitalization of Historic down town, as part of this committee, we went to work:
- Established the first Downtown historic Mansfield Business incentive Plan. Brought initiative to Revitalization board to create the Historic Downtown Economic Incentive Program that established the first Community Activation Grant; Popup Grant and Sm business restaurant grant initiative
- Creation of Downtown Zoning District- Landuse
- Promote development of City Owned 4-Acres by Hogue Global for a $50 million project
- Create a Downtown website for business, events and parking information
- Vacant Building ordinance
- Gateway signage that marks the downtown entries
- Brainstorm the needs to reopen the Mellow Mushroom and worked with the owners of property, banks and interested parties to get new ownership that will be opening soon. Meehan Chophouse and Cigar Bar
- Provide Activation of Lot Events and more events Downtown
- Made changes to Mansfield’s Candidate application process for city elections to assure more transparency. On the list for discussion of election process to include requirements of 12-month residency compliance-
- Speaking of Transparency, a first time ever all in focus that is driven to be more of an open book for the citizens to have more access into our operations, our projects, and our book of business. Just not as reported by a council member or the mayor but a transparency open to the people that will live on past any council members tenure. We broadened our communication, presence at community events and added more accessibility to updates and reports on our website
- Opened a digital studio in order to better communicate with our residents .
- As a commitment to establishing and maintaining public trust in local government, the city expanded Public Recorded and Transparency dept for access to information by adding the most requested information or that which is regularly sought after onto the website for review
- Building our relationship with MISD by establishing regularly meetings to discuss ways to collaborate City and Citizen’s needs
- Saved MISD $10.5 Million in lost revenue by negotiating purchase of valuable property located in the reserves that will provide as a funding source for the city and citizens.
- Member of steering Committee for the design of the Multigenerational Recreation and Library Center to include a world class experience with library’s services, exercise, wellness open and event spaces.
- Appointment of Mansfield Citizens to the BOND election steering committee to review the projects presented and make recommendations to the Council for which projects should go onto the first bond election held in 17 years.
- Aggressively act upon changing the mindset and culture of MEDC by hiring a new director and pivot towards a “Pitching” philosophy for recruiting, of business and industry that will provide for the sustainability of the city and its citizens.
- Initiatives implemented to promote the city nationwide to entice businesses and developers to come to Mansfield in order to help provide for jobs, better land use choices, lower taxes and sustain our local economy. (MEDC and City staff to go out and find it)
- A focus and emphasis on traffic congestion and management to include condition of roads and timing of lights. This lead to tapping into Tarrant county bond election for additional funding for needed road construction/repair for Day Miar, Dick Price, Heritage Pkwy east bound lanes. The Focus remains!
- Created a Cultural Arts Master Plan initiative
- Remembering our Fallen traveling memorial came to Mansfield for the first time, but not the last
- Achieved bond rating upgrades in the following: Utility Fund and Drainage Fund to AAA; MPFDC and MEDC to AA1; and reaffirmed General fund at AAA.
- Worked with City staff to leverage our excellent credit ratings to do the following:
- Refinanced the Utility Fund debt saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars
- Having access to a 20 year interest rate of 1.70% for a bond issuance that is the lowest in Mansfield City’s history
- Expanding the corporate limits of the City boundaries- through the ETJ in efforts to add long-term fiscal integrity to MISD, to our City, and provide for future remarkable experiences. More to come!
- Completed renderings of the New Public Safety Facility for Mansfield Police Force as well as approval for a needed Air and water truck for our City’s Fire Dept.
- A Standards, Registration and Inspection Requirements policy was implemented for Multi-family Dwelling Complexes;
- Working to established Mansfield’s very own inspections program to control our own Health Dept inspections
- A Concierge hired at City Hall to improve the residents and business partners experience
As Planning and Zoning Commissioner-
- I invested over 19 hours in continuing education that include courses sponsored by NCTCOG taught by Attorneys, Terrance Welch &Robert Brown, for the basics of Planning and Zoning in Texas; Took several hrs continuing education through American Planning Association to better understand city analytics, financial health and the economy.
- I worked with other commissioners, staff and council as a team to research, scrutinize and discuss zoning applications that come before us to push quality construction, look at safety concerns, provide acceptable density; accurate site plans and projects that are good bones development to compliment and sustain our growing community.
- Mansfield is about 73% developed. Over the last several years, I have worked with staff and council to update the zoning ordinances to reflect a higher quality of design . I worked with staff for updating the zoning map to accurately reflect our landuse currently in place, our percentages of development and what we have left to develop. This design will provide data to accurately reflect what has been developed , identify our opportunities and guide us in making good informed decisions as Mansfield develops out.
- Our Land Use Plan hasn't been updated in years. It is on target for revision, updating and will serve as a good foundation for zoning, subdivision regulations, guide good decision making about growth , development, and landuse , while preserving our history and natural resources.
As a Member of the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee-
- I worked with other members of this committee and staff to question , scrub or update our water, sewage and roads related impact fees to make sure we are getting sufficient dollars from new development that will pay for necessary infrastructure needs and related safety services. These fees are reviewed every 6 months for efficiencies.
As a Member of the Construction Codes Board of Adjustments and Appeals-
- I was there at this Board's inception.
- During my tenure, I worked with other board members to set guidelines for the Mansfield Construction Codes Board. This Board set standards to maintain our property values , protect the safety and welfare of our citizens through enforcement of applicable codes related to the upkeep and design of property , buildings and other structures within our City.
As a Member of Mansfield Tree Board-
- I worked to set good policy with preserving our trees in Mansfield
Fiscally Responsible and limit waste
While City Council's role is to make key decisions for the community’s standard of living… it is imperative that we include what local residents need and want, what they are willing and able to pay for, and what services they can expect to receive for their tax dollars.
- The City continues to grow and we have worked to bring retail, commercial and industrial to this area. There has been much talk about homestead exemptions or providing other means of funding such as exploring a sales tax redistribution. I have participated in some of these talks and proposals. I made comments and worked with individual council members to brainstorm renovations to our current budget. And we finally arrived there this year. I will make sure these talks continue with City staff and council to raise the bar for taxpayer relief.
- Of the functions performed by City Council, budgeting is the most important focus to maintain a fiscally responsible vision of growth and prosperity for our community. This means constantly re-evaluating our debt service and balancing costs with planning out for the essential long term needs such as roads, bridges and equipment ... infrastructure.
- Mansfield needs to revisit our land use policy . This means updating it to be in line with what our current land use reflects. And have a plan to make good use of our vacant land we have left.
- Much has been done to streamline many of the City's operations that reduces waste such as printing and copying paper. Using emails with documents that can be received and read on IPads and computers at meetings. Updating the Website to include information and accessibility to documents and publications rather than using the cost of postage. We still have opportunity and need to continue this effort by exploring the use of consolidating staff meetings, perhaps reduce drive time by having more virtual meetings that can be done from afar.
- We still need to fine tune our website for easier navigation to documents, provide more accessible documents to include line by line draft budget info during public hearings and provide for more citizen feedback surveys to provide useful input to various city depts.
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For Mansfield's Past, Present and Future I have been here-- Building Our Future Together! 
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