Government
BY RACHEL LELAND
Over the summer, the Pearland Chamber of Commerce hosted an event supporting Epperson’s appointment as city manager.
COURTESY PEARLAND CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
New Pearland City Manager Trent Epperson prioritizing nances In May, Trent Epperson was appointed Pearland city manager. Epperson had served as interim city manager since November, when previous City Manager Clay Pearson was red. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com. Tell us a little bit about your background and your career at the city of Pearland. [Prior to working for Pearland], I was over in Missouri City for about 7 1/2 years working in
the nance o ce, as well as the engineering and public works group. I also ran their capital improvement program for several years. In 2006, I had the opportunity to join the city of Pearland and run its capital improvement group. After a few years, having both the engineering capital projects and the public works realm in my portfolio, I came into the city manager’s o ce in 2015. I’ve been in the city manager’s o ce since then. Tell us a little about yourself. I’ve been married for 26-plus years, and I have two grown kids that are both in dental school that we’re proud of. Outside of work, we do a fair amount of traveling, hiking and outdoors-type stu . I spend a fair amount of time at the lake as well, and my wife and I attend a fair amount of concerts every year. We just love live music.
What are your top three priorities? I think one of the top three facing us is nancial resilience, or making sure that we’ve got a good nancial plan moving forward. As well reported, we’re coming out of a tax valuation issue that occurred a year ago. It kind of got us back to square one where we are moving forward with a good sound budget and a good nancial plan. The second thing is that we always want to keep an eye towards public safety and making sure that we are vigilant and put an emphasis on that to make sure that our re, police, [emergency medical services], as well as our public works folks ... [are given] the tools and the equipment they need to make sure we’re prepared. I think the third thing is we’ve started within the last few years making sure that we’re building internal nancial capacity for the long term for our infrastructure.
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