As Elections Near, Abilene’s Political Issues Mirror San Angelo’s

Abilene sits 85 miles north of here is only 22 percent larger in population than San Angelo. and our sister West Texas city is having an election, too. The city council election is also May 7 followed by a runoff election May 24 for Taylor County Precinct 3 Commissioner and State Senate District 24.

Many of the issues the residents of Abilene are worried about mirror San Angelo’s, and some do not.

Saturday, the Abilene Police Association held a candidates’ forum at the Pappy Slokum Brewing Co. on the old U.S. 80 in the north side, featuring 10 candidates for offices ranging from City of Abilene City Council, to County Court at Law Judge, to Taylor County Commissioner. See also the story on candidate for state senate Susan King.

Current Abilene City Councilman Kyle McAlister is running for re-election for Place 5.

“All of our council seats are ‘at-large.’ We don’t have single member districts like many other cities do, including San Angelo,” he said. Though all residents of Abilene can vote for each council member position, McAlister said the six positions represent a certain part of town, three in northern districts, and three in the south. To run for council, people must live within the geographic confines of the seat’s district they want to represent, McAlister said. Terms are three years.

McAlister, the one-time Abilene television news anchor, was also curious about issues important in San Angelo. Let’s start with the San Angelo ordinance requiring all dogs and cats be spayed or neutered.

“We haven’t touched the spay/neuter situation. Citizens haven’t complained enough, I guess,” McAlister said. However, Abilene did have a crisis about noise complaints concerning the loud crowing coming from backyard roosters in 2015. For his time in government, McAlister said this issue was big time.

“I received 500-600 emails from the angry pro-Rooster lobby,” he said.

The Abilene Reporter-News described a two-hour city council session where council chambers were packed with rooster owners and rooster advocates. The ordinance to ban roosters failed.

“The speakers saw the changes as threats to their pets — their family members — their way of life and their civil liberties,” the newspaper reported then.

Trash is another issue facing Abilene. The City runs the trash service, not a company like Republic or Texas Disposal Systems. It owns or leases the trash trucks and makes money with curbside pickup.

“One thing we’re looking at right now is curbside pickup of recyclables. We launched a pilot program to gauge public interest,” McAlister said. So far, McAlister is bearish on Abilene’s reception of curbside pickup. The goal of the pilot is to sign up 3,000 recyclable pickup customers. So far, several weeks in, McAlister said the program has fallen short. Only about 2,200 have asked for the service for a $5.57 additional monthly fee, he said.

McAlister said there are several private sector recyclable drop-off facilities.

“And you know you can’t do anything with glass. No one wants it,” he said. The City of Abilene has a glass grinding facility that makes fine sand out of disposed glass. “It’s really beautiful stuff,” McAlister said. Citizens can pick the sand up by the truckload and use it for xeriscaping. The service is free.

Abilene faces challenges with water, too.

“I’m not a fan of running out of water,” he said. Although Abilene shares access to water in the O.H. Ivie Reservoir with San Angelo through the Colorado River Municipal Water District, McAlister said they don’t use it much. “Our primary source is Lake Fort Phantom Hill (due north of town). It’s 1.5 feet over the spillway right now,” he said. Here are Abilene’s other water sources.

He said his city has completed the application process to present to the TCEQ, EPA, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers the proposed design of the Cedar Ridge Reservoir on the Brazos River in Throckmorton County. The reservoir project faces stiff opposition from environmental groups but McAlister sees it as an aggressive approach to making sure Abilene has plenty of water to support its economy into the future.

He didn’t mention water reclamation.

Abilene’s streets are falling apart, McAlister said. “We’ve had no steady maintenance since we got rid of the street repair crew in 2008.” He said citizens of Abilene overwhelmingly approved Bond Proposition 1 with 81 percent of the vote in May 2015. It was a $45.9 million street improvement package that identifies 25 specific streets slated for improvements. The bond is part of a larger effort by the city to spend money to replace fire station buildings and improve the water distribution system, he said.

San Angelo has also embarked on a financed street improvement program, an $80 million, five-phase plan. Each phase requires the City of San Angelo to assume a $16 million certificate of obligation, or loan.

All of this spending may be slowing, however. Abilene sales tax collections are down 0.76 percent this year. McAlister is worried Abilene is starting to see the effects of the decline in oil field operations finally. Midland is down 18.56 percent and San Angelo’s sales tax collections have declined 13.99 percent in 2016 versus this time last year, according to the State Comptroller.

Bomber Politics

Dyess Air Force Base is an integral part of the Abilene community. But unlike Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo, Dyess has a runway and a wing of B-1B Lancer bombers and another wing of C-130s. Urban sprawl towards the base can jeopardize Dyess AFB’s existence during the next Base Realignment and Closure, BRAC.

With a bomber base, Abilene faces competition from Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana; Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City, South Dakota; Minot AFB in Minot North Dakota; and Whiteman AFB in Knob Noster, Missouri, southeast of Kansas City.

Of concern for bomber base communities is the question of who will gain the Next Generation Bomber, the proposed replacement to the B-1B and B-52H that will cost $500 million per copy. Consider the consternation in Shreveport over the NGB and Barksdale AFB’s future: Will the NGB be based at Barksdale? There are so few bomber-equipped bases that the competition between communities with bomber bases is fierce.

Flying military bases have infrequent Joint Land Use Studies, and the Department of Defense asks the communities to put some skin into it.

In early 2016, the council considered allowing the Abilene Development Corporation to contribute $50,000, or 10 percent of the $500,000 cost, to the next Joint Land Use Study. Councilman Steve Savage was at the forum Saturday to defend his vote against the city funding the JLUS. Two of his opponents, Jim McNiece and Dason Williams, said they disagreed, and argued Savage was anti-Dyess AFB.

Savage, who owns Stinky Steve’s Septic and Grease, was very vocal with his opponents at the forum. He said he wasn’t voting against Dyess, but wanted the county and other communities near Abilene to pitch in a part of the $50,000 before the city did. The measure passed anyway.

Regardless of Savage’s “No” vote, McNiece and Williams are splitting the anti-Savage vote, and the local paper endorsed Savage. The Reporter-News went on to encourage Savage’s opponents to get involved with local city boards to learn how the city operates after they lose.

The Abilene Chamber of Commerce sponsors the U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command’s Abilene Trophy, awarded to the AMC municipality that offers the finest level of support within the command. Since Dyess AFB is an Air Combat Command base, Abilene is not eligible to win the trophy its chamber finances.

Considering the rancor at the city over spending $50,000 to support a Joint Land Use Study for Dyess AFB, ineligibility may be a good thing, at least up and until the next BRAC, or when the decision on where to base the NGB is made in Washington.

Sector Style Policing

Abilene appoints its police chief. The only four city staff positions the council has powers to hire or consent to hire are the city manager, city attorney, city secretary, and the municipal judge. Everyone else, including Abilene Police Chief Stan Standridge, is appointed by the city manager.

The several APD officers view San Angelo’s police chief election with curiosity, but none will go on record about the issues in San Angelo’s political race.

Abilene’s police utilize “sector style policing,” a strategy also implemented by San Angelo Chief Tim Vasquez, but criticized by all of his opponents. Like San Angelo, Abilene is divided into four sectors (they have a map). Vasquez’s opponents argue that eight or more “districts,” rather than four “sectors” will see more police presence on the street.

Many Abilene officers Saturday disagreed that the older district style policing strategy works better than having larger sectors. Smaller districts are inefficient in modern crime fighting, a patrol sergeant said.

“We’d be patrolling empty streets and need twice as many police to handle the problem areas. The old police tales never die,” he sighed.

God Has Not Left Taylor County

An interesting race has developed for Taylor County Commissioner, Precinct 3. Abilene land developer and banker Dale Morrison and Taylor County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Brad Birchum were neck and neck in the March 1 primary results. Morrison edged Birchum 34-31 percent. Since neither received 50 percent plus one vote, the runoff is May 24.

The March 1 outcome was interesting because Morrison, who previously endured a seven-year battle with cancer and had a bone marrow transplant, now living cancer-free, had a mild stroke two weeks prior to the primary. He said he was in the hospital two days and released without any side effects.

“Five days later, I was playing on the racquetball court,” he said.

Morrison said his life is a blessing and he is using his campaign to witness for Christ. “God called me to run for office,” he said. “He laid it upon my heart to run for county commissioner and I’ve never run for office before.”

As a volunteer Baptist ordained minister, Morrison used the forum Saturday to encourage law enforcement officers and firefighters to realize they are “ordained ministers” too. He quoted the Bible, Paul’s letter to the Romans, Chapter 13, about government authorities. “They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer,” he quoted.

“You are set apart by God,” Morrison continued to the first responders. "Some of them (my detractors) say, ‘Dale, you’re running on religion and God. I say, ‘Yes, I am. God’s my father,’” Morrison said.

On the issues, Morrison wants to increase the salary of the Taylor County Sheriff’s Deputies. He mentioned a starting salary of $31,500 for deputies was too low, and promised to get $5,000 to $8,000 more. He is also interested in reducing the load on the county jail by raising the nightly bed fees surrounding counties pay Taylor County to house out-of-county prisoners. He said jail space is at a premium when local crime fighting efforts need it.

“If we build a new jail, I will demand we use local contractors,” Morrison said.

Morrison’s stump speech revealed vividly the strong evangelical streak in Abilene politics. Almost all of the candidates who spoke had a prepared statement about their personal salvation through Jesus Christ. Even the only Catholic speaking at Saturday’s forum, council candidate Dason Phillips, made a statement about his personal faith in response to an exchange with Steve Savage, who accused him of being the “Bernie Sanders of Abilene.”

“I am conservative. We can talk about my faith; I attend Holy Family Catholic Church. I go to mass every Sunday. I’m pro-life, except in the cases of rape and incest,” he said.

Inside the brewery, conversations with "the heathens" at the event, those identified when imbibing craft beer at the bar, revealed much about religion in Abilene politics.

“Don’t you know, the Church of Christ runs this town,” a patron at the bar explained. Having Abilene Christian University located in Abilene strongly influences the local culture. “I hope really it’s not all about that,” another woman said. She is supporting Birchum and noted warily that her candidate lost to the deeply religious Morrison on March 1 by a couple points.

Birchum said now that Stan Egger, the 24-year incumbent, is retiring, he saw the office of commissioner as a way to serve the county “at a higher level.” He’s a no-nonsense West Texas lawman. Like all of the commissioners in Tom Green County say, Birchum admits the county budget is hard to cut, since much of the spending by Texas counties is mandated by the state. And no one wants to raise taxes.

“It’s about doing more with what you’ve got,” he said.