BY CODY THORN
Outgoing commissioner reviews highlights from 18-year tenure in seat After 18 years, Tarrant County Commissioner Gary Fickes is not seeking another term in the November election to represent Precinct 3. Fickes spoke with Community Impact about his time on the court. Answers have been edited for length, style and clarity. Looking back, what are things that stand out during your tenure? We kind of came into office wanting to do some- thing about the highway problems that we had in northeast Tarrant County—mainly meaning the lack of adequate infrastructure. That and health care. Are there any projects that you consider monumental in your tenure? We were able to secure the needed funding for
a project called the DFW Connector project. It was Grapevine, partly Coppell, Irving and Southlake. Primarily it was in Grapevine. It’s on the north side of the airport. And it was basically a $1.5 billion project, and we didn’t have the money. When I became a commissioner we started working on the money part of it with [the Texas Department of Transportation] and the federal government. Putting this in a time perspective, when President [Barack] Obama established what they called stimulus money, we were able to secure about a half a billion dollars of stimulus money. How has the precinct changed in your tenure? My precinct now has probably surpassed 550,000 people. It was probably in the high 200,000s when I became a commissioner. One of my goals was to continue to help make northeast Tarrant County, my precinct, the best precinct in the state of Texas from a lot of different angles—from health care to certainly road construction and economic devel- opment. That was the hardest and the easiest part. We had something people wanted in our area, and I think a lot of people moved here because we had a
COURTESY TARRANT COUNTY
desirable area for people to live, and the biggest part was the quality of our school districts. Do you have plans for retirement? I probably won’t totally retire. When you totally retire, you fade away, and I’m not sure I’m ready to fade away. I’ve got a lot of organizations to keep me busy.
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