ABOUT THE ISSUES

Kalie knows that the safety, infrastructure, and amenities in West U are the best in the Houston area. She wants West U to get back to the basics of proper city management to maintain, and improve, the quality of life that generations of West U residents have long cherished. To Kalie, that means a return to wisely prioritizing the maintenance and improvement of essential city infrastructure, implementing efficient and effective business processes for city staff, and achieving excellent retention rates for city employees, all while maintaining low tax rates, an excellent debt rating, and the financial flexibility to quickly and competently address the inevitable surprises that will come our way.

PUBLIC SAFETY:

Nothing is more important than the safety of our residents. West U MUST address three important issues that have been neglected for far too long.

Staffing: City leaders brag about our Virtual Gate, yet have not prioritized hiring the staff needed to optimize this investment. Our police department has not been fully staffed in over a year! West U has always had the financial resources to achieve full staffing, yet these positions remain open. Our fire department struggles to recruit from an ever shrinking pool who often must commute in past many other cities in which they could serve. We should reconsider our city's current compensation targets to ensure that people are clamoring to work in West U. This could improve our ability to hire lifeguards for city pools, which is increasingly difficult, and impacts how available the pools are for resident use. We are currently without a Public Works director, and other essential building development staff, which puts oversight to our many municipal and residential construction projects at risk.
School Safety: For years, our recently retired police chief recommended that the city enable an emergency camera system in West University Elementary School, to allow our police department to access live footage in the case of an active shooter. City leaders must work with HISD to ensure that this safety measure is achieved.
Fire and Police Facility Renovations: Since 2019, the City has known that it needs to renovate the fire truck bays to enable improved maintenance access. Six years have passed, yet city leaders have deferred this work in lieu of a Facilities Master Plan that addresses renovations to our Police and Fire Stations dead last, during a so-called Phase IV. They have prioritized the demolition of our functional library and community center, and construction of a new $11M public works facility, new $ library, new senior center, and new city hall building before addressing long identified needs in our most important departments.

INFRASTRUCTURE:

City infrastructure must be maintained to ensure public health, safety, and convenience.

Water Independence: West U's water independence is invaluable. For decades, residents have breathed a sigh of relief when the City of Houston announces a boil water notice, as West U has well water access, and its own Wastewater Treatment Plant. Our city must prioritize the maintenance of this system as a matter of public health and safety. Our 43 year old Wastewater Treatment Plant almost failed during Hurricane Harvey, and in 2020 the City began working on plans to improve it. Five years later, and our Wastewater Treatment Plant still stinks. We have money on hand that may be used to fully fund this essential project now.
Drainage: The city has taken on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drainage projects across the city, yet these new pipes remain restricted, as we have not yet purchased the land to accommodate the required storm water detention. Until we prioritize this purchase, the restrictor plates will remain in place, and this investment will remain unfinished. Current leaders have left detention land unpurchased, yet they just approved the purchase of a $1m property to facilitate plans to build a new library and senior center.

FINANCIAL PRUDENCE:

The city's current 2025-2034 Capital Improvement Plan relies on our city taking on over $360m in debt to fund the pie-in-the-sky Facilities Master Plan, in addition to necessary drainage projects, new water tanks, etc etc. This debt will crush our community - it will raise our tax rates, which become a harder pill to swallow every year as property values in West U reach shocking heights. It will also lower our excellent bond rating, which we've had for many years. Like you and I, the city of West U can't afford to do everything it wants, all the time. Wise leadership means prioritizing important, essential items, and only taking on the discretionary projects that most citizens want, and that our city staff and functions can accommodate, without diminishing quality of life.

QUALITY OF LIFE:

The constant construction that the city has been forced to endure in recent years has eroded our collective quality of life. Impacts of this work range from noise pollution from unmanaged spec home projects that are allowed to operate seven days a week with little oversight, to environmental pollution from the increasingly frequent home demolitions that require no preparations to or safeguards for neighboring homes. We are all impacted, whether by essential infrastructure maintenance or residential home construction, as we navigate exercising on and traversing our streets. The city must begin to manage these projects better, especially when many of them, like the recently bricked crosswalks on Buffalo and the street work on Rice near Kirby, have to be redone due to poor quality and unsafe work. We must support our Public Works department by ensuring it is fully and appropriately staffed, receiving sufficient training, and doing project management to lessen the impacts that these projects have on our citizens.