One of the biggest struggles I have as an elected official is finding avenues for better communication. At my core, I believe in open, honest, and collaborative communications. My job as Mayor is not to impose my will on the people of Castroville. Rather, my job is to understand what the people I represent truly want, put together plans to accomplish what the majority wants and try to find compromise when people don’t agree.
My intent with the content on these pages is to first provide insight into myself, my approach, and the strategy of the collective city council. Secondly, I want to open up conversation. I’ll provide a lot of detail to inform and educate people on what the city council is doing and how it impacts them, and I really hope people will get involved, reach out, and have real conversations. Every member of the council has their personal contact information on our city’s website, and I encourage people to discuss directly with them. It takes more work than simply being a “Social Media Warrior,” but it will also produce better results.
So, while the majority of the content will be for the people of Castroville, I will also provide detail that our friends in Alsace will enjoy and that the general public outside of Castroville can get to know what is so amazingly special about the community of Castroville.
All Posts:
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Where do your property taxes go, if not just to the city?
Many people are surprised at how little of their property taxes go to the city. It’s only a little over 1/5 that actually go to all of the services provided in the city. In Castroville, right at 1/2 of the property taxes go to the School District (we should all be happy to invest in Continue reading
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Where does the city get money?
City finances can be quite confusing at first, but we can simplify them – both by explaining how they work and by constructing a budget that separates expenses into easily understandable chunks. NOTE: We’ll discuss revenues in detail in this post and look at expenses in separate posts. We have two major categories of revenue Continue reading
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Interesting ideas on people-centric villages
“When places are designed by other people than the people who live there, and then the people who live there are powerless, then that is a broken design.” Continue reading
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Videos about Castroville
In an effort to spread the awareness of things going on in Castroville, the city has partnered with Clinton Haby, with his company, StoryKeeping, to capture some of the really great aspects of the city. You can see the completed videos on the Castroville, Texas YouTube Channel. Continue reading
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Thus begins a Journey
When I first moved to Castroville, “Charlie Boy” Suehs, the man who sold us our house and who adopted us as extended family, explained the obligation of the house and its legacy. Both of Charlie’s parents served as Mayor, and I think everyone expected that Charlie would one day do the same. He’s one of Continue reading
Life in Castroville 