To Marble Falls Councilor Bryan Walker, government is a balancing act
Marble Falls Place 4 Councilor Bryan Walker at the DailyTrib.com offices in Marble Falls. The 29-year-old councilor talked about what it's like to serve in government. Staff photo by Aidan Wright
This story was written by Aidan Wright and Jacob King, juniors at Marble Falls High School. They volunteered as reporters at DailyTrib.com and KBEY 103.9 FM Radio Picayune on Thursday, Jan. 26, as part of the Rotary Club of Marble Falls 2023 career day program.
With the city election filing deadline drawing near, Marble Falls Place 4 City Councilor Bryan Walker talked about what it’s like to serve on the council.
“It’s a matter of balancing the ideas: the ideas of citizens and the ideas of council,” he said. “You have to figure out how do we balance all of those.”
In his first term, the 29-year-old councilor played a part in several important city projects, including developing the new Park View Park, a new wastewater treatment plant, and a new City Hall. And he looks forward to continuing.
“I want to throw my hat into the ring,” Walker said when asked about whether he would file for re-election. “And (I want to) touch base with what the citizens want.”
Walker has several things he’d like to see accomplished in the near future, such as modernizing the city’s technology, solving traffic congestion on heavily traveled roads, and lowering the city’s property tax rate.
“We need to find ways that we can be responsible with the budget to allow those tax rates to be brought back down,” he said. “They went up as a result of the floods and some of the disasters we’ve had.”
Walker believes live streaming meetings will increase government transparency. The City Council stopped doing that after pandemic shutdowns ended.
“If you’re a city above 50,000 people, you have to live stream anyway, that’s state law,” he said. “With that being said, we’re getting, not necessarily close, but the way our city budget is, the way that we conduct business, we look like a much bigger city than we are.”
While Walker supports live streaming meetings, the councilor noted some drawbacks with broadcasting council discussions.
“When somebody knows things are being recorded, people have a tendency to maybe modify what they are doing,” he said.
Another issue Walker said residents often reference is the congestion of several main roadways. The city’s lack of control of state and federal roads, including RR 1431 and U.S. 281, has complicated possible solutions.
“We don’t have any jurisdiction on 281,” Walker said. “That’s all mandated by (the Texas Department of Transportation),” he said. “The best thing the city can do is maintain the side roads that people use.”
Walker plans to file for re-election in the coming weeks.
“Our city secretary is on vacation right now, so even if I were to submit the paperwork right now, it wouldn’t be put on the website,” he said.