Election day for Kyle City Council District 5 and 6 seats is May 9. The Hays Free Press asked the six Kyle council candidates the following ten questions. Answers printed as submitted.
See the other candidates responses here:
District 5 candidates: Damon Fogley, Laurie Luttrell, Jaime Sanchez
District 6 candidates: Tammy Swaton, Dex Ellison, Daphne Tenorio
Jaime Sanchez, District 5
Construction Manager for horizontal construction (road and bridges) for Bury, Inc.
1. What are the most important policies Kyle needs to implement to ensure it reaches and maintains sustainability? Polices that regulate and define incentives for commercial and residential development. As our city and debt grows we need to offset the burden to our citizens by attracting new business but at the same time we need to attract new business without providing huge monetary incentives. We cannot continue to put the burden on our citizens. If we continue with huge monetary incentives it will have long term ramifications to our growth, infrastructure and current inferior transportation system.
2. What are three achievable goals you would champion during your term?
Execute the existing road bond projects efficiently and effectively to provide the most return for our investment dollars. Get involved with the design and construction phase without overstepping my role as a councilmember. I will provide ideas, and options to our staff as I have done for my clients in the past, saving them thousands of dollars.
Promote small business by establishing incentive policies and procedures.
Promote and define one of our biggest assets, IH 35 corridor thru a new IH 35 comprehensive plan. In order to accomplish this, an organized group made up of urban planners, engineers, business community and citizens would need to be organized to define what we want our corridor to look like in the future.
3. What do you believe is the number one issue facing Kyle? The number one issue is the anticipated growth and our financial constraints. We are already behind in keeping up with current growth with deficient infrastructure, insufficient water, waster plant capacity issues, and defective and inferior road system and as growth continues these issues with will continue exacerbate. We need new direction and ideas to manage this growth.
4. What ideas do you have for branding the city as a tourist destination? I prefer to brand our city the hub for an elaborate and extensive medical center. We are on the right path with our current medical system and should to support and attract more businesses in the medical arena. This type of business will bring in employment; business and more importantly revenue to either reduce our debt or assist with paying and fixing our infrastructure. So let’s continue what we stated.
5. What is the name of your neighborhood and what is the most pressing issue for residents there? I live in original down town and our pressing issues are current policies which are not tailored for the original downtown. We have been forgot and abandoned. Our roads are following apart, we don’t have a drainage system, the city does not cut the grass and weeds on city ROW specifically along all the alleys, and our kids don’t have sufficient sidewalks to go school safely. I can go on but I feel that the majority of attention is towards new development, instead of revitalizing our original town. The city would not exist if it was not for our original downtown.
6. Do you have any professional experience that will help you as an elected official? As a native of this great city, I have deep roots and have seen the growth and it affects on our citizens. That is why I am so passionate about representing our city. As a former council member, I have hands on experience of the inner workings of our staff, personnel, debt, and policies and I have extensive experience in engineering and roads construction which should be very beneficial as we execute our first road bond projects.
What would you recommend to diversify the business and residential communities in Kyle? In order to diversify our city, our current planning zoning and comprehensive plan needs to be revisit to specifically define our needs and wants as a community. For example look into defining the nodes layed out in the comprehensive plan, defining what we as citizens what to see along our corridor and just as important the revitalization of our original downtown.
7. What do you see as the greatest threats and opportunities for the future of Kyle? The anticipated growth and financial constraints is our greatest treat but an opportunity to make this a better city to live, work and to send our kids to school. This city is resilient and has a huge potential for great things and I look forget to assisting our town in these growing pains.
8. Why should voters elected you over your opponents? I think my overall extensive experience in the inner working of the city, plus over 25 years in the engineering, and construction arena involved in multi million dollar projects has given me a great understating of contracts, roads, infrastructure, water, wastewater, design, and construction resulting in significant saving to my clients. More importantly my conservative financial values over excessive and liberal spending make me a better candidate to reduce the burden of our citizens and provide the much needed work our citizen’s deserve.
9. What should our readers know about you before they head to the voting booth? As a native of this great city, I have deep roots and I don’t plan to leave. I enjoy all my school mates, friends, great school system and our church. This is definitely a great town to leave and raise a family. I have also run several time for council and have never asked for donation, because I think my town is worth the expensive.
10. What is the most recent book you read? No books, just a lot of contracts for engineering services.