Tom & Kelly Dawson with newly elected Bastrop City Councilman, Lyle Nelson, all residents of Hunters Crossing
Yesterday’s historic runoff for the Bastrop City Council Place 3 seat resulted in a very decisive win for Lyle Nelson — 59%, 361 votes — over Lee Harle. Congrats to Lyle, his family, his neighbors in Hunters Crossing and Riverside Grove, and to the entire Bastrop community!
This is a big win for the entire city of Bastrop community, a community that is still reeling from years of ‘good ol’ boy’ cronyism that seemed unchangeable. Bastrop city voters put their boots on in the first round of voting in May and elected the first woman mayor, Connie Schraeder, with a similar decisive lead.
This comment by “Texas Voter” in the Bastrop Advertiser article today about the race well captures the significance of Lyle’s triumph:
Nelson’s achievement here is historic in that he was able to marshal outlying voters to overcome the solid block of downtown votes consistently wielded by the handful of power brokers who control and exploit Bastrop. Congratulations to both Nelson and Bastrop.
Another way of saying it is this — the Good Ol’ Boy Network had its ears clipped in this city election — good for us all! Just don’t take your boots off yet…we still have some kickin’ to do.
There are still people on the Council who think it’s their task to serve themselves and their friends, not to mention similar characters on the Bastrop Economic Development Corporation. Both are handling YOUR money and still don’t know where the buck stops.
There are now ongoing discussions about the Ethics Ordinance. We are asking you to pay close attention to this. While we support any tightening up of the ordinance that is needed, we have already lodged a concern about what appears to be a complete rewrite of the ordinance. Not only do we not believe a costly and complete rewrite is necessary, we heard enough whining at last week’s Ethics Workshop from Council members Deborah Jones and Gary Schiff to signal that a rewrite could wind up doing more harm than good. Watch the video of June 13 and see for yourself.
We hope to see you at the next Ethics workshop at 5 pm on Tuesday, June 27. The Council meeting starts at 7 pm and will likely start with Lyle Nelson’s swearing in.
We’ll be calling our own meeting soon to lay out some ideas we’ve had cookin’ but were waiting to share with you until after the election.
Of course, always feel free to contact us any old time.
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