Place Three

At this point we have two people running for place three in the College Station place three race. The incumbent Ron Gay is my polar opposite. At the big community confab over Weingarten’s desire to shove a supper Wal-Mart up against the East Side neighborhoods, Gay commented that he would rather we did not have regulations that force people to cut their grass. More recently he chastised “you government people” for wanting to institute traffic impact studies for new development. He is an idealistic libertarian. He seems content to allow tax money to go for subsidizing new development in the ETJ but little else. Despite my disagreements with Gay, I do appreciate his willingness to speak his mind, even when ill-advised. I also suspect that he is serving out of more altruistic desires than some. Serving on City Council is an incredibly time consuming, unpaid job for which there is all too little thanks. Even those who serve for reasons of ego or career advancement deserve our gratitude, but those who serve out of love of community or ideal deserve an extra share. So often I have spoken out against Mr. Gay as I will in this election cycle, but let me take this moment to extend a heartfelt thank you for the time and effort that he has put into our community.

Opposing Gay will be former council person Dennis Maloney. Maloney is the voice of independence. He tends to avoid alliances and is not easily influenced. Like Gay he seems to be motivated primarily by concern for our community. Maloney cut his teeth on city politics at a grassroots level successfully working to fight the connection of Welch Street into Bush. I like Maloney and his often pugnacious style. There is little doubt that I will end up supporting Maloney in this race. There is also little doubt that I will continue to question some of his “accomplishments”. In the last mayoral election he claimed Home Depot as one of his big accomplishments. We gave big incentives to bring Home Depot to town and here is what we got for that investment:
• They mowed down one of the largest stands of old growth oaks in town. As a child I spent time in those woods and I can tell you there were some phenomenal trees in there - trees that, with the slightest effort could have been saved.
• Where those trees once stood they paved a massive parking lot with an ugly big box. Maloney’s justification is that it is not as ugly as the supper Wal-Mart in Bryan.
• We have paid an outside business that ships three times the amount of revenue out of our community to compete with our local businesses that keep that money in town and help define our local character, which is what creates tourism. I don’t care if businesses like Callaway Lumber and Parker Astin hardware are in Bryan rather than in College Station, most citizens consider Bryan to be a part of our community and we would a heck of a lot rather see our money going to local businesses in Bryan than to Home Depot’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta.
Other than the fact that it is ugly, destructive of environment and community and costs us lots of money Home Depot was probably a great idea. To be fair, Maloney was also one of the voices speaking up for the East side Residence against Weingarten. I will be interested to hear what he has to say on issues of annexation, and restrictions in the ETJ.

Both Gay and Maloney are men who speak their minds. This ought to be a great race.