Calendar: FM Candidates Forum Friday April 28
Here's perhaps your one chance to hear the two mayoral candidates, plus the uncontested council candidates, all in one place.
Friday April 28 7pm at Town Hall. The forum will be moderated by Bob Weir, a former mayoral candidate, who's now editor of The News Connection.
I hope to attend and blog the discussion. I'll be the one with the laptop. See you there!
While you're thinking about it, take a moment now to tell the candidates and other Flower Mounders what issues are most important to you in the upcoming Town elections. Click on "comments" to see my list, and to post your own.
posted by Chip Mahaney @ 5:27 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
My top candidate issues for the 2006 Flower Mound elections:
1. Generating high-quality corporate development for our southern and western sectors.
2. Aggressive management of the upcoming TxDOT road projects, including 2499 expansion.
3. This year's Master Plan revisions.
4. More to come on this one, but I'd like us to invest in ways to market our Town from within. Have you seen what downtown Dallas has done, with all new directional signs to point you to the key sites (museums, West End, etc)? Along with more and better "front-door" signage, we should be making a bigger splash for our residents and guests all throughout the Town. We've already got the brown street signs(!), let's build on that to make Flower Mound instantly identifiable from anywhere in Town. Let's be deliberate about this.
I would suggest putting the Master Plan revisions at the top of the list. In our Lakeside Business District, for example, developers are asking for zoning that would allow residential development by right and are proposing thousands of apartments and condos. Their rationale is that the residential market is hot right now and they can sell these projects quickly. Maybe we should just go ahead and change the name to Lakeside Residential District while we are at it.
I believe we should only allow residential as an accessory use, which by definition requires a dominant commercial use and gives the Town maximum bargaining power regarding the quality and character of the entire development. So if you want some condos to go with your hotel of office tower, great. There is a solid economic development argument for the synergy created by including a residential component within a larger and primarily commercial development.
My main concern with the mayor we have now is that she is more of a people-pleaser than a leader and is not capable of making the tough calls when and where needed. I think the proposed RaceTrac gas station near Parker Square is a prime example of this. If she had been clear and direct with them when they first came in, they never would have filed their application. But she waffled and told them she wanted to be their cheerleader and now they are going to waste a lot of everyone's time and money bringing forward an application that will never make it passed P&Z or Council.
Jim Lang
214-797-5511
www.jimlang.com
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