Yesterday I made the mistake of trying to drink a cup of coffee and read my new 2022 home value at the same time. After I finished choking and wiping the coffee off of my computer monitor, I started browsing Read More …
Property Taxes – 2023
Category: Bond 2019
ARPA
ARPA is the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which was signed into law in March of 2021 by President Biden. One aspect of the law is funding for local governments for ‘lost revenue’. This is calculated by a series Read More …
Naaman School Rd Update, July 2021
As many of you in the area have noticed, several of the properties that are in the path of the Naaman School Rd rebuild are now vacant. We’re in the process of closing on those properties now, and once they Read More …
Rail Crossing Repair
If you’re like me, you’re tired of having to realign your front end every time you drive over a railroad track. We have several major crossings here in District 8. The rail companies are notoriously slow in their replies, and Read More …
Fall 2020 Updates
With the annual budget passed and a number of new initiatives in flight, I wanted to provide everyone with a general District 8 update. Unfortunately we still can’t hold a town hall meeting due to COVID-19, but I look forward Read More …
Build Garland 2019, Moving Forward
Yesterday Garland voters passed all nine propositions on the ballot. Eight of those were bond items, totaling $423.7 million. Voters in District 8 strongly supported the majority of the bond proposals as well. In the coming weeks we’ll prioritize the Read More …
Town Hall Meeting
District 8 Town Hall: April 11, 6pm – 8pm, Garland City Hall Join Council Member Robert John Smith on Thursday, April 11th, from 6 to 8 p.m. at City Hall (200 N. Fifth St, Garland) for the District 8 Town Read More …
2019 Bond Presentation – GADC
A big thank you to the GADC for having me out this evening to discuss the 2019 bond program. As promised, here are the links to the presentation you saw tonight, a soft copy of the handout, and the bond Read More …
2019 Bond Part 2
Finalizing the Bond On Thursday Jan 24th, 2019 the City Council completed its third round of deliberations on the content of the 2019 Bond Program. We left that meeting with three important takeaways: There has been no call to delay Read More …
2019 Bond Part 1
Months of meetings, thousands of pages of reading, and what you see on the May ballot all comes down to the decisions that the council will make during the next few weeks. Original Write-Up We started the process back in Read More …