Well, I was born and raised here in Texas City. I grew up going to the schools and First Baptist Church. I played little league baseball, youth soccer, and was in the Boy Scouts, earning the rank of Eagle Scout. I then served for 20 years in the Army, traveling all over the world in peace and wartime. When I left, Texas City was a proud city, and everyone had a voice. If you had questions about what was going on, or to complain or compliment about something, you could do that without fear of being silenced or retaliated against. When I returned home, Texas City started to change that aspect.
I decided to run for Commissioner at Large for a few reasons: public safety, transparency, and fiscal responsibility. We have a problem within our police department and communication between the police officers, the police association, and the city. There is a reason we have lost over 60 officers in the past 3 years, and it seems to be getting worse. We need to figure out what and where the problem lies to ensure the safety we, as citizens, need and deserve. If the problem lies in the association, the officers need to fix it; they do not need to create a new one because they don’t have the support to do so. Secondly, any citizen should be able to go before the city council and express their grievances without being silenced or told they can discuss only what is on the agenda for that meeting. We should be allowed to know how the money for our city is being spent and afforded the opportunity to question that spending if we need to. And lastly, as citizens, we shouldn’t have to worry about whether our taxes will jump drastically because the city hasn’t had an annual audit since fiscal year 2022-2023. Not conducting these audits prevents the state from evaluating whether our taxes should be adjusted. Saying that we are a no-tax city because our current administration has done an outstanding job is very misleading and fraudulent. We are currently a no-tax city because our audits have not been done in accordance with state law, which allows for our taxes to be set accordingly. Yes, the audit for fiscal year 2023-2024 was just completed and left us with bigger questions, such as an overpayment of $1 million to vendors and duplicate payments to certain vendors. This is not fiscal responsibility on the part of our current administration, given that our fiscal year 2024-2025 audit is now over 180 days past due.
These are just a few of the reasons I decided to run for Commissioner at Large, and with your support and vote, I will work with the new administration to start fixing these problems. So please get out and exercise your right to vote. Early voting starts April 20th, with the election day May 2nd.
Thank you,
Wade Johnson
