Well, one benefit of delaying City council elections was a massive increase in voter turnout. That turnout was not good for soon-to-be-former Goldfish Chuck Williamson, who was beaten like a red-headed stepchild by Gordon Nelson.
Nelson 1527 votes (61%)
Williamson 966 votes (39%)
I’d have to go back and check, but I think Nelson just got more votes than Misti Talbert got COMBINED in her last two elections
[*UPDATE* Fact check – true. Misti ran unopposed in 2017 and was thus gifted the mayoral position. In 2019 she received 543 votes]
As I’ve stated in the past, the best thing about Nelson is that he is NOT Chuck Williamson. Williamson is the guy who once lamented that “we are giving too much away” as a City and then turned around and handed rich developer Deorald Finney $72,000 in ‘free’ electrical hookups and another $185,000 to his former City council buddy ‘Greasy’ Chris Harrison and S2Ms.
In other words: good riddance!! Bye Chuck.
Other good news: Bob Goodart defeated Zach Taylor for the Place 5 election to City council 1306 to 1154.
Why do I care about this? Since the Lampasas Dispatch never asked either candidate about their thoughts on the LEDC ‘Business’ Park boondoggle, I requested their positions myself. The Dispatch was very helpful in this regard. The response? Well, Zach Taylor never responded to me. Bob Goodart responded quickly…and he is NOT a fan!
Here is Bob’s statement on the ‘business’ park. Maybe we’ll have some 6-1 votes now instead of council rubber stamping everything without dissent:
“The business park has been a colossal waste of money to this point. The citizens of Lampasas voted to not buy the property, but then the City Manager, Mike Talbot managed to purchase the property through the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation, which is funded by the City of Lampasas.”
“The park sat for years until the decision was made to bring utilities to the park, to entice businesses. The cost to taxpayers was over 1 million dollars to bring water, sewer and electric to the property. Those utilities have sat idle for at least 5 or 6 years. I have now heard there is a plan in the works to build roads inside the park to attract business. So millions more will be spent to sit idly by until when?”
The return on investment on this property will be measured in decades instead of years at best. The best way I know to recoup any money out of this deal would be to sell it to a developer for a housing development, but the City will still lose money on it. No major business wants to build here because we are too far from the interstate, we don’t have a rail head, we don’t have the workforce to sustain it and we don’t have the things that are attractive to those businesses, such as hotels and restaurants and housing. It is my opinion it should be sold to recoup some of the money or at the very least, stop throwing money into it, until there is a firm commitment from a major business to come there.