My Platform

New Braunfels continues to be one of the fastest growing cities in the country.  If fact, it's currently ranked number 2!  Our population is booming and there is no end in sight.  Our population is growing from anywhere between 5,000 to over 12,000 people each and every year.  Our population in 2020 was at 90,403 residents and it has grown to over 125,000 residents.  That is about 35,000 new people within a five-year span.  This fact is nose-bleed incredible!  I understand that there is going to be growth and more new residents.  We just need to do it differently! 
          We are building apartment complexes after apartment complexes; stacked housing.  This is going to happen, but we just need to understand how they will affect out traffic and our water.  We need to take a better look at how we are building and how it can benefit our environment and our citizens.  There has got to be a better way!  Our neighborhoods are being re-drafted to look like grid-squared cookie cutter designs.  We do not want our beautiful city to resemble that of Las Angeles, a cement city!  We are trying to compete with San Antonio and Austin.  We must have land area beautification, environmental concerns, and an image that will remain charming.  We have become and are quickly transforming into a densely overpopulated rural city at a rate that needs better planning and common sense.  Again, growth will happen, we just need to have common sense when do it.  This transformation is driving our citizens out.  Our congestion and traffic is getting way our of hand.  It's horrible!  We are disgusted with this massive irresponsible growth, and it must be re-visited and planned better.  We must preserve the look and feel of our city before we forever lose its charm.

          WHAT I WILL DO AS YOUR MAYOR:  I will examine all future projects and ideas that will pass through City Hall and I will make sure that developers are held responsible for what they will and can do for congestion, what they will do concerning water conservation and how they will help our city.  What can big businesses do to put back into our community.  I will look into our current tax incentives that are given to some developers.

          I vehemently hate apartment complexes everywhere I look.  At the same time, people need a place to live that will be less expensive than houses.  Growth comes at a cost and we have to do it smartly.  I will look very hard on future developments and designs.  All new future designs will have to have charm and contain an image of old town New Braunfels!

          The era of cheap water is gone!  Our current water plan and infrastructure does not support this massive growth.  Our city planners have failed to plan and therefore planned to fail.  They have realistically neglected and ignored this topic altogether. 

          Our future with water is non-existent.  We have been in water restrictions for years.  We are growing at a rate that our water cannot support.  Our utility bills keep rising every year.  This is a serious issue and does affect all our citizens. 

          We are a water deficit city.  You do have city leaders arguing that we are not, but in 10 years we will be using more water than our city can regenerate or bring in from all known resources.  This will bring the City of New Braunfels to a status of a “water deficit city”.  Unless we act with this "deficit status" now, we are planning to fail.  Currently, we are not.

          We are currently in a 5-year drought with absolutely no end in sight.  We need a water planning strategy as our city is currently reactive and never proactive.  We truly need to practice conserving water.  The Comal Springs is one of the most important waterways, not just in Comal County but for most of Texas.  We must teach the public and our businesses about the vital importance of water conservation for our future with water in this city.

          We need to enter 17 – 20 inches over the recharge zone in order to get the Edwards Aquifer back to it normal operating level.  That is when we will start seeing the Comal Springs flowing freely again.  Currently it sits in Stage-5 water restrictions.  The Edwards Aquifer J17 well is feeding us 40 to 100 million year old water.  The Aquifer is at a historic low!  Our water recharge zones have been poorly designed and miss managed.  

          During an interview with a fantastic local realtor one year ago, NBU stated that the main part of why New Braunfels is running out of water is because of the growing population; the growth and development.

          The New Braunfels “Water Resource Plan” was written in 2018 and is currently being re-drafted to meet the demands of this massive and unrelenting growth.   

          No water currently flows from the primary spring at Comal Springs in New Braunfels, Texas.  This is usually the largest complex of springs in the Southwestern part of the United States.

          WHAT I WILL DO AS YOUR MAYOR:  I will focus on future developments and I will be in constant contact and planning with Texas state leadership to recognize that New Braunfels must be labeled and known as a "Water Deficit City".  We must do this NOW!  We need state funded water infrastructure help.  We need investments in new infrastructure, i.e. reservoirs and pipelines.  We need to booster our water reuse with desalination and enhancing our water conservation.  We need to be a part of Texas's water gird.

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MY PLAN:

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1.  New Infrastructure & Storage with new reservoirs.  Be a part of the state-wide water gird, and aquifer storage.  Our city needs water from "Water Surplus City's.  

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2.  Water Reuse & Desalination with water recycling.  Desalination using large-scale plants to desalinate brackish groundwater and seawater.

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3.  Conservation Education and Action with businesses and the public.

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4.  Funding & Planning with the Texas Water Fund and the State Wide Water Plan with the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB).

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5.  Environmental Water and Basin Systems by working to ensure sufficient water is allocated for environment needs to protect our ecosystems.

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There is a lot to be done!  I will make sure that the great City of New Braunfels has water coming its way in the very near future!

Our wonderful and brave New Braunfels Police Officers need much more funding!  The New Braunfels Police Department currently has 175 Sworn Officers.  The overall U.S. national average for cities within the U.S. is slightly higher, at around 2.3 to 2.4 officers per 1,000 residents.  Which would bring the total to about 288 officers needed for our city.  We currently have 1.3 per 1,000 residents.  We are currently short 113 officers.  They are not operating at a capacity to properly and safely protect and serve our citizens.  This is not even mentioning the over 3 to 4 million tourists that visit our city each year.

          Our New Braunfels Police Officers need a weapons training facility, better vehicles, modern and up-to-date communications equipment, more personal, etc.  For the fiscal year 2025, the New Braunfels Police Department (NBPD) has an adopted budget of approximately $28.6 million with funds dedicated to personnel (175 officers, 40 staff).  Apparently, this budget is not good enough!  Not at all!

          WHAT I WILL DO AS YOUR MAYOR:  I will successfully introduce and pass a Crime Control and Prevention District (CCPD) for more funding with monies not coming from the citizens.  This money will come from sales tax.  Our current City Hall leadership HATES THIS IDEA!  THEY DO NOT WANT IT!!!  Every major city has a CCPD.  We should too!  For years the New Braunfels Police Officers Association (NBPOA) has actively pushed for a CCPD via petition drives to get it on the ballot, aiming to use a small portion of existing sales tax for police funding that would pay for training, hiring, and community safety, but the City Council continuously rejects all proposals.  In 2022, the NBPOA performed a citizen-led petition effort for voter approval.  Again in 2023, the NBPOA gathered signatures to force a vote after the City Council didn't approve the district.  The NBPOA pushed for only 0.125% of the city's sales tax (about $3M annually) for police needs like more officers, training, and school resource officers.  City Hall, again, shut it down.

          WHAT I WANT TO DO in 2026:  Push for and approve a 0.208% of the city's sales tax (2/8ths of one cent of the city's sales tax, worth about $5M annually) to go directly to our Police Officers the newly implemented CCPD.  New Braunfels already collects the maximum sales tax, so we would have to reallocate existing funds, not raise taxes.  I will make this happen!

          In 2023, I ran for Mayor and was proudly endorsed by the New Braunfels Police Officers Association because of my dedicated support and a promise to give them all the help that they need!  The NBPOA trusted me over our current mayor.  New Braunfels needs a Crime Control Prevention District!  I will bring that to our City!

          Some of our current city leadership has stopped listening to you!  Concerned citizens show up to city hall to express grievances and our leadership has simply stopped listening.  You are being talked down too, interrupted, and disrespected.  I will never interrupt you, disrespect you, or shut you down!  You will have all of the time you need to speak and all developers will speak last!  The citizen will come first!

​          It takes an amplitude of courage for someone to leave their house having to prepare a well written speech the day before and walk up to that podium and express their concerns to our elected officials.  People forget what they need and what the want to say.  There message will never be heard if they are shot down and told to go back to their seat and remain quite as their time has ran out.  I will NEVER do that to anyone!  I will let someone talk for as long as they need to air their grievances or to state their points.  That is how City Hall will operate when I am there!  I will always hear you and respect you!

1.  The Thoroughfare Plan is a disgrace and will mean the total end to our wonder Hill Country.  New Braunfels needs to re-visit this subject and REJECT the Thoroughfare Plan!  You have spoken up about this massively ugly plan, and our City Hall has voted in favor of it.  The City of Boerne rejected the plan in 2023.  Guadalupe County Commissioners Court further pushed back approval of its proposed countywide thoroughfare plan.  They rejected it!  The City of New Braunfels should as well!

2.  Our "Pay for Parking" downtown New Braunfels needs to be re-visited.  Our citizens are split and we need to come to a better solution that will both benefit the city and the tax paying citizens!

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3.  The triple X-rated sexualized instructional content that is specificaly geared to and targeted to our children within the children's section in our public libraries is very wrong and truely evil.  We need to finally handle this stiuation and put and end to it now!  We need to move these books, this harmful material from the children's sections and into the adult sections, where they belong.  This is immoral and wrong!  We must do this now!  Our current mayor decided to do nothing about this subject.  He does not care.  During the mayoral debates in 2023, he stated that he will do something about it and decided to do nothing.  As you Mayor, I will DO SOMETHING!

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                     for Mayor of New Braunfels, Texas!