LG City Council Hopefuls Tout Their Candidacy at Forum
The La Grange Citizens Alliance hosted a City Council candidate forum at the Fayette County Ag Building in La Grange on Monday, April 5.
The City Council election takes place on Saturday, May 7. Incumbent Kathy Weishuhn faces Sandy Hooper in the Ward 1 race. Incumbent Violet “Patsy” Zbranek faces Ken Taylor in the Ward 2 race. Chris Jernigan faces Arthur Bosque in a special Ward 4 election for a one-year term. Jernigan holds one of the Ward 4 seats by appointment.
The first question went to Bosque, asking whether the City should livestream City Council meetings.
“Yes, I want to, so the people who can’t come to the City Council meetings can know what’s going on,” he said.
Weishuhn said she would also support livestreaming the meetings.
“However, keep in mind that it’s only a one-way process,” Weishuhn said. “When you’re livestreaming, folks can’t participate or comment or do petitions as they can do in person. However I know there are people who can’t come in person. Livestreaming is the way of today. Everything is on the internet and it gives everyone access.”
Jernigan said he also supports livestreaming meetings.
“I believe it would show the oath that we took – open government, accountability, transparency, honesty and service,” Jernigan said.
The candidates fielded several questions about addressing drainage problems around the City. Last year the City suffered serious flooding issues following a pair of historic rain events.
“I know there are drainage issues, and I don’t know a lot about how the process works, but I do expect that we would do an evaluation, determine what needs to be done and put a plan in place,” Hooper said. “I’m a fiscal conservative, and I want to know how much it’s going to cost before we do the work. You’ve got to study it like everything else – figure out what the major issues are and go from there.”
Taylor said the City could tackle some drainage problems through “short-term action” while developing long-term plans.
“I had a situation at my house where the drain wasn’t working,” Taylor said. “We went down to Beefhead Ditch, and the drain running from my house to Beefhead Ditch had a block of foam where they tried to fill in a bad spot when they made the connection. That foam was blocking half of the pipe. If myself and the contractor hadn’t gone down to Beefhead Ditch, we would have never known. It actually worked pretty good when you’re not blocking half of the pipe. So how many other situations do we have like that?”
Zbranek said drainage is the biggest problem facing La Grange.
“Just recently the City had a study done by BEFCO Engineering,” Zbranek said. “Tim Sanders from BEFCO came and explained the drainage issues. He showed up maps of where the drainage problems were and how it could be eliminated. This is a big job and a very expensive job. The City is taking each one, one at a time, and seeing what can be done to help the drainage in the City. It was very unusual to have two big floods in one year. I’ve been around a long time, and my garage flooded. This is what happens, but we are working on that. We’re working with BEFCO to try and get the issues straight.”
Weishuhn showed a map prepared by BEFCO showing the drainage issues.
“I try to carry it and pay attention to it to see where we’re at,” she said. “We’re also applying for grant monies, to get money from the American Rescue Funds (...) so we can fund these projects. They are extremely expensive and will take some time to complete. Of course we can look at short-term measures, too. We have been discussing the best way to handle those. With large amounts of water and rain events like we had, there will be major things that are needed.”
Jernigan said the City should consider hiring different engineers to study the drainage problems.
“I think weren’t trying to fix a problem and throw stuff at it instead of doing research and looking at what the real problem is,” Jernigan said. “We’re redirecting water, which is causing blockages in different areas of town. They’re throwing quick fixes at it. I think we need to get somebody, outside engineering, to look at it instead of just going with one.”
The candidates were also asked about their vision for the future of La Grange.
“I think we need some more businesses,” Bosque said. “Our businesses, let’s see what we can do to help them out. A lot of people go to Bastrop. Maybe we can get them to come here.”
Taylor called his vision for La Grange “something old, something new and something blue.”
“I’d like to return to some of the days gone by in our downtown area,” he said. “People used to come and work hard, they came to the downtown area to eat, they came to talk, they came to buy groceries, clothes and all on our square.
“Something new – we need to recruit new retail businesses,” Taylor added. “And something blue – we have an asset right on the edge of town, the Colorado River, that we are not utilizing. There are some nice ideas to bring in tourists if we did.”
Zbranek described her vision as “community and oneness.”
“Even though our city is growing, I hope we can continue to come together to help each other and that we never lose that small town feeling,” Zbranek said. “I want our city to see each other as neighbors or even close family – not just people who share a zip code. This town is my home and it has been for many years. I love this town. The people here are family and friends, and ultimately I want the people who reside here to feel the same way about La Grange as I feel.” Weishuhn said she wants La
Weishuhn said she wants La Grange to retain its small-town feel as well.
“There are things here such as Second Chance where our ministerial alliance and churches get together to run this for our community and help the people who need it,” Weishuhn said. “AMEN Food Pantry, Meals on Wheels (...) you will find people here who serve many groups and they do it because they live here, they know people and because we are a community. I want us keep that. We’re going to have growth. We’re going to have other things. But my vision is to keep those things that we are.”
Hooper said she believes La Grange needs to grow.
“We need to bring business in. We need to bring revenue in. If we’re going to do things we need for the city, we’re going to need revenue. I’m not saying bring everyone and their mother in. On of the functions of the Economic Development Corporation is to attract business and make La Grange a good place to come. If we have a strategic plan in place for the next five or ten years, we can grow La Grange to be still a small town environment but with more business and people and make it a better place.”
Jernigan said La Grange needs to capitalize on the area’s location and beauty.
“We’re a centralized hub for Austin, Houston and San Antonio,” he said. “We’ve got rolling hills, bluebonnets, the river, but we’re not doing anything to capitalize on bringing business and support downtown. We have these assets to attract, but we fail to support the businesses. We need to be actively targeting the businesses that we want or we’ll get stuck with what we get.”
Watch a video of the forum on our YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/giWEobyJxkY or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/fcr.news/videos/2180533168788911.