BY GABBY BAILEY
can. From the other side of the coin, the Razor Ranch area has developed with Target and other retailers coming on board. The growth is undeni- able around the airport and the energy center. To have the growth we have there helps us firm up our tax base, and [we want to] continue to expand the airport because it’s just a great, unique feature that Denton has. And you can’t go without talking about [the master-planned developments with] Landmark and Hillwood, the Cole family and what that area will be like in southwest Denton. It’s truly going to be an amazing gateway for the city. Are there any scenarios where you look back and think, “I could have handled that differently”? In a perfect world, I wish I would have had the ability to use relationships [for quiet zones] with the railroad. They’re still in process. I wish I would have had more opportunities to leverage relation- ships to get that further down the line and get us going there, because truly, it boils down to putting in a curb. Just so people can’t drive around the arms of the railroad crossing and [the trains] don’t have to honk their horn.
What was the most significant challenge you faced in office? That’s where you get back to the votes and the larger projects and advocating. I tell people all the time, it’s difficult to work with six people you didn’t pick. I’ve lived in Denton my entire life, and you’ve had people on council who have been on council for four years and lived in Denton for five, so I’m talking to them about how we don’t want to make the mistakes from the 1980s and their con- text is the [COVID-19] pandemic forward. How do I communicate these lessons learned from living here to someone who wasn’t here? That kind of debate and finding a solution [to find] what serves the community the best is a challenge. Since you became mayor, what growth have you seen in the city? The elephant in the room right now are the multifamily apartment complexes all over the place. I got that question from a fifth grader at one of the elementary schools I visited who asked, “Hey, what’s with all the apartments?” That’s a challenge that we’re working through as best we
Any advice for the next Denton mayor? I do believe it is truly best to focus on those projects that don’t require a vote, like serving the city, serving staff well and providing information for them to work on. That would be the critical part for a future mayor to understand: Don’t get caught up in buildings and stuff where you have to have consensus or where you got to work through the railroad community. All those things are good and worthy to do, but focus on the stop signs, the school zones, the curb fixes, the ADA accessibility, the things you can do every day with staff’s help. What’s next for you? I want to continue to serve. I was blessed to be appointed to the Civil Service Board by [Denton County] Sheriff [Tracy] Murphee. I’ve served in council before, but I hadn’t had a chance to serve in Denton County. We will certainly run for office. I ran for county commissioner, unsuccessfully by a few hundred votes, but we’ve taken a look at that, and [my family and I] will go back to the drawing board. For me, it’s eyes wide open and trying to see where our skill set best fits.
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