That time we talked to the mayor

This is episode number 7 of The Homeowner's Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner's Show. We are so glad that you could join us. If this is your first time with us, go ahead and hit the subscribe button there on iTunes, Stitcher— what else do we got?

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Yeah, definitely.

Definitely. Kevin needs the ego boost.

That's true.

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It's only so much we can do on video.

Come on, Kev, get your, uh, we need your CGI skills to I'll work on that. Game that up. All right.

I'll do what I can.

Yeah. So we, we have a pretty cool episode for you guys today. We actually have a local government official in studio to talk about all kinds of fun stuff today.

Yeah, it's gonna be, it'd be good to kind of talk about the things that surround homeownership. You know, there's a lot that goes into actually owning your home, but then When you own a home, when you buy a home, you're buying into a city as well, or a municipality or some sort of a community. And so we're going to kind of talk about what, what are some of the things surrounding that aspect of owning a home.

Yeah.

And that's a, that's an odd relationship for most people. I mean, because I think for most people, even though local government's just down the street, I mean, this, this feels like a very distant relationship. Like those are those people over there. in that other country, and they probably built a wall to keep me out so that I can't interact with them. But they're over there making the rules, and they're collecting my taxes, and they're probably not spending them right.

Right.

But we have to live together.

Yeah.

So, but that's them over there.

Yeah, I think that's the misconception. Because it's, it's probably the place where you can affect more change than anything else, I would assume.

Well, you're assuming.

Well, you know what that does.

Well, it's pretty consistent with your personality.

Yeah.

Anyway, well, who we have with us today is Jimmy Kirkendall— Kuykendall. I am so sorry. Jimmy Kuykendall. There's that road that just throws me off every time.

I can't argue with him.

Jimmy, thank you for being with us today, man.

Good to be here.

Yeah.

Good.

So Jimmy, tell us, give us a little bit of background. I know that you've had, you're in the midst of like a 3rd career at this point. So give us a little background. Let us know where you started, how you got there, and where you are now.

Well, I was born in 1955. No, we'll skip all that part. Actually, I just retired almost 3 years ago after 38 years of railroad management. career. Started out as a brakeman conductor in 1978, went into management, and finished up as head of HR and labor relations for a little railroad called the Port Terminal Railroad here in Houston. Excuse me. Before that, I was 29 years with Union Pacific. After I retired, dealing with labor relations like I've done, I decided to continue on as a mediator. So, I have a practice doing mediation. I deal with all types of mediation, family mediation, parent coordination, stuff like that. And then, as you mentioned earlier, I'm also the mayor of

the city of Oak Ridge North.

So, just in the middle of all that, you just decided, you know what, I'm going to be mayor?

Well, not really. I tell everybody I was walking down the street and they couldn't find anybody else. But actually, almost 9 years ago, 2011, a little bit less than 9, it'll be 9 years next year. But I've been involved in politics in Oak Ridge North, long-range planning committees, stuff like that, helped put together some things. There's a lot of turmoil going on. So basically we got an entirely new council and mayor elected. A lot of good folks were there. The mayor at that time, Joe Michaels, was appointed to the Conroe Independent School District. You can't serve 2 positions, so he vacated the mayor's position and I was appointed. I was reelected without opposition after 2 years. For 2 terms after that. And then I've had an opponent for the last 2 terms and

I've won both times. Last time I won was 70% of the vote, which I'm pretty proud of that.

So soundly.

Yeah. I think that pretty much told everybody that we're doing what the citizens want us to do. And we've done a lot of great things.

I mean, it's 70%. That's like pretty much unopposed.

They call that a landslide, I think.

Yeah, I don't, I don't want to say that word, but yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin, you were walking down the street once in Arkansas. You didn't get appointed mayor.

I got, I got something, but it wasn't appointed mayor.

That's why I moved to Texas. I was fixing to say, isn't that how you ended up here?

That's the, that is the reason.

Fled to Texas.

All right. Yeah.

Yeah.

He told everybody, everybody else can go to hell. He's going to Texas. Like Sam Houston said.

Something like that.

You're mayor. So, and recently you put up an article on Facebook, and so there are certain issues that are pretty important to you. You're not up for election right now, right?

No, I'm not.

Yeah, so, but it is an election season, so there are issues up on the ballot. There are things that people are voting for, and we have issues around here that are pretty particular. And I saw that one that was, you know, this is why we called you, was there was an issue that you brought up that I thought was really pertinent to homeowners.

Water.

Water.

Water is the future gold.

It's—

you have water rights, it's like having gold rights, mineral rights, because it's running in short supply. We're draining the aquifers at a record rate around here. The big issue is how much can we pump out of the aquifers here? We've had a program with— through the San Jacinto River Authority where we're converting to surface water. Oak Ridge North, for example, our mandate is to have at least 30% of our water come from surface out of Lake Conroe here, for example. We're not drilling or not pumping from the wells. We have 3 wells in Oak Ridge North. We've since capped one because we can depend on surface water, and that well was old and it was

not pumping very much. The Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District Came up with a plan where we built a— they built a $500 million water treatment facility to treat the surface water out of Lake Conroe and to pump it to a lot of communities all around this area. The controversy now is whether that science was good or not when that— when that contracts were made some, yeah, I think 8 or 9, 8 years ago, something like that, right when I became mayor. I think I'd been in office one week when all this came up. So really—

Welcome to the town.

Yeah, yeah, welcome here. But there's big lawsuits going on about it. There's a lot of people wanting to overturn it. The governor has changed the Lone Star Groundwater Conservation Board from an appointed position to an elected position.

Okay.

So all of those positions are coming up for election in just a couple of weeks.

So who previously appointed those positions?

The governor appointed them.

Like the governor of Texas?

The governor of Texas appointed those positions. So they had legislations passed in the last well, almost 2 years ago now, that makes this an elected board by the citizens. For example, the City of Conroe has 2 positions, City of The Woodlands, Township has 2, and then the rest of them kind of like at-large positions. The problem with that is that there's a lot of misinformation, and that's what I wrote about it in the article. The science they're using now is a little bit different than the science they had before. It's like expert witnesses. You can go anywhere you want to and get anybody to say anything you want them to say. Yeah.

Especially if you pay them enough money.

If you pay them enough money. There are candidates running for this office right now that are being supported by private water companies. Now, it's not in the citizens' best interest for a private water entity to have control of unlimited pumping because they take that water, they create muds with developments, and then they sell the water to them.

If they're able to pump that water without a limit, Real quick, so for people that don't know, what's a MUD?

Good idea. Municipal Utility District.

Okay.

That's what, when they come in with a big development, the builder or the developer will probably create a water system, sewer system, that type of thing. And then all the tax— or the homeowners in that area pay for that over the next many, many years.

Yeah, that's where I live. We're under a MUD ourselves. And it's something that I didn't know about before we moved to this area. So it is new to me as well. This is all good information for me.

Everybody needs to be aware of that. A MUD is a very— it's a government entity. You're basically a MUD over an area out in the county and use a lot of their influence. For example, in Texas, they've already decided that they can create their own police department because under the law in Texas, it says that they create, they can protect their own assets. So what they've done in a lot of areas, they correct— they, excuse me, contract police officers to come patrol their areas along with the sheriff's department because they're out, they're still out in the county. So that's an issue. And that's a big difference between a city. And I personally have problems with places like that because you don't need more government.

So what you're telling me, what I'm hearing you say, Is it's almost as if they have so much power that they're circumventing the government itself. It's like it's— they've got their own ways of doing things and they can kind of get around what has been set up for years and years and years.

Well, to an extent. They can only have the power that the state law gives them.

Okay.

In the case I'm talking about, one MUD district, for example, created a special district with the city of Houston. Now, Houston is some 30-some-odd miles away from our area out here, but their area, their extraterritorial jurisdiction comes all the way out to the end of Oak Ridge North on the south end. Now, that MUD down there made a special deal with them that Houston would not annex them and they'd create a special district and charge 2% sales tax and give Houston part of it.

Hmm.

See, that's You know, that to me is not a good thing, but that happens. And that's why there's going to be legislation this year in Texas legislature when they meet in January regarding these special districts, because that's not always a good thing.

Sure.

Getting back to it. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Getting back to the water issues here. There's a lot of good people here. Now, there's a big lawsuit that's been going on that's driven up the water rates. Because we pay as a homeowner, we pay our water bill to the city or to the MUD in your case. We pay a fee to the Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District because of all the things they do for the water. And then we pay a fee to the San Jacinto River Authority. Now, let me refresh you. Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District was created by the legislature, I think in 1993, to oversee and maintain our aquifers in Texas. They came up with a 30% savings each

month in water so that we could maintain the level of our aquifers for hundreds of years, whatever. San Jacinto River Authority came in and said, we can sell you this groundwater out of Lake Conroe. That's their entity. So, we pay them a fee every month also. That's made everybody's water bills go up. What the problem is here is that everybody's water bill is going to go up because water is not going to get any cheaper. Water is going to continue to get higher and higher as more and more people move because there's more and more use of water. We have problems with the lawsuit that's going on here between the City of Conroe that filed lawsuit against the Lone Star Groundwater

Conservation District, and then that increased all those legal fees. piled up on taxpayers. So for the last 2 to 3 years, we've been paying a lot of money to the San Jacinto River Authority— excuse me, Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District— to pay for their lawyers to fight the lawsuit that one of the entities that signed the contract has filed against them. It's a big mess, but it all comes down to this election coming up.

And so are there specific provisions that are going to be in this election cycle about About that, about the San Jacinto River Authority and the conservation and all that?

Yes, yes. Um, there, all the boards on the Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District are up for election this time. All the candidates are running. There's a lot of— I think there's a couple of people that were on the previous board that are running. A lot of the other candidates that are really being pushed hard by an organization called RAW, or Restore Affordable Water, is what it what it's called. They have pushed a slate of candidates, did mailouts and all kinds of stuff. And they are backed by a private water company called QuadVest. QuadVest is a company that has— well, they have their own interest at heart, I'm sure, because they're a business.

Sure.

Now, I'm not saying their candidates are good or bad, but I want candidates who are willing to come in here and work on behalf of the citizens. I don't want them to come in here to reinvent the wheel. There's a lot of talk that these guys are going to come in and basically, well, let's just drop the lawsuit, let the city of Conroe win. But that's not how this is going to work, because I believe that a lot of people in the state of Texas, other groundwater districts all around the state, are looking at what's happening here. If, for example, this contract, $500 million contract that we all signed years ago, If that's overturned, there's nothing to say that all these other water districts won't do the

same thing, find some other type of science that they like, and then do the same thing. So this has got a ripple effect that I believe is probably going to be decided in the Texas Supreme Court one of these days.

So it's really interesting. I know as we've got listeners listening to this show today, they're going, okay, I'm not into politics. I'm not into, you know, some of these sorts of things. But what you're saying is that all of this is affecting me as a homeowner, my bottom dollar, that my water bill is gonna go up. And so it's not just a matter of me washing my dishes every day and taking a shower every day, but especially if you're the type of person who has an irrigation system and you're using a lot of water on your grass and these sorts of things. That month to month to month, I might see a certain percentage increase in my water bill because of all of these politic things that are happening. And so I guess the thing that

I really kind of want to bring it back to here is, as a homeowner, this should be something that I'm concerned about.

Exactly, exactly. Let me talk about how the water system works in a city, and I can only speak from our city, our city that we live in. Water systems are self-sustaining. That means that the water and sewer systems need to be paid. They need to pay for themselves by the users that use the services. If you have a high water bill, it's because you used a lot of water.

Sure, that makes sense.

Yeah, and I'm going to give you an actual example. I brought my water bill. It's a good example. In the month of September, or basically last part of August into September, I paid $233.08 for a water bill. That's water.

One month? One month.

Wow.

Now, the reason I did that is because I like to water my yard. I water my yard 3 times a week during that hot part of the year. I've got a great-looking yard. That was my choice to do that.

Right.

Am I wasting water? No, but I'm paying for the water. I'm paying a premium for that water. This month I turned off the sprinkler system and the latest bill I've got Was for $86.17. Now that includes the actual— I only used 946 gallons of water that month. Now it's just my wife and I there. I use the minimum amount of water that you get billed for, but then on top of that were fees for like the garbage, $30. Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District fee was $0.23. A lot of people think that's just unbelievably bad, but 23 cents. But that's based upon the amount of gallons of water I used. The Lone Star Groundwater— the San Jacinto River Authority fee was

$6.06. So again, based upon the amount of usage. Then of course the sales tax on that, it's $2.50. I say all that to say that we're in control of our own destiny with water. The basic rate in Oak Ridge North is $13.46 for up to 10,000 gallons. Commercially, it's higher. Now commercial businesses have higher rates, and that's just completely different. But we're talking about homeowners here. If I like to water my yard a lot, I need to expect that high bill.

Mm-hmm.

But if I want to conserve it, a lot of people in our town like to use the irrigation system that comes from rainwater that goes into the cistern-type systems that they can use it to water their yard or gardens and stuff like that. There's a lot of alternatives. A lot of that stuff is what the Lone Star Conservation District does. They go out and try to educate the public about how to conserve this water and get the 30%. But in our area, I think we, we have very good rates, and, and everything that we pay for water in the City of Oak Ridge North goes directly back into it. This year And our year just ended. Our new year

starts September. We are going to put about $300,000 back into our water system for maintenance and upgrading our infrastructure. About 4 years ago, we had to sell bonds to pay for a new water system in Oak Ridge North because in years past, the systems had been neglected and the infrastructure corroded. It was down to nothing. We were experiencing in our sewer and water system tremendous leakage, which cost a lot of money. So with the new bond, we were able to build 2 new storage tanks, which were condemnable by state standards before, and we're able to redo basically the sewer system from the past. Over the years, we've done that. Now, instead of having to float a bond in the future, we are

paying a little bit every year as we go. So that we don't have to go into debt, and that's good business.

Well, that sounds good. And the one I like about that is that you're doing everything to be responsible. And again, as a homeowner, it's important that I buy into a city, a municipality, a township, whatever, that is being responsible with their water and that they're fighting for the things that are in the best interest of me. the homeowner and not just in the best interest of the water company who's trying to make money.

Right.

So that's really important.

It is. And a lot of things, there's a lot of things that homeowners don't realize. You let your toilet leak, you flush your toilet and you hear that water kind of leaking out there after it stopped, you better call somebody. A little flapper in there that leaks, you let that go over a weekend and you could cost several hundred dollars. We've had a case where a woman did that It leaked, was out of town, came back. I think she owed $800 as a water bill because that water continually dripped all the time. Same thing with pressure in your house. You know, get a pressure meter, put it on your faucet to see if your house has a leak in it. See if there's a

water leak somewhere. These are things we can do. If there's a leak in your irrigation system, fix it.

Yeah, we actually talked just last week, our episode number 6, We talked with Jim from JC's Leak Detection about this very issue. So it's real interesting that just an episode later, you're bringing up the very same issue. This is not something that is just a small thing that, you know, ah, we'll just let it go. It really does matter.

Yeah, same thing. You got a leaky faucet, you know, a little faucet, kind of a little stream coming out like that. That's money. That is actual money going down your drain.

Yeah, and it's, it's not just you either. I don't think I even got to talk about this last episode. But like, we actually had an issue where somebody on the property left a hose on watering the horses and got a notice from our, our water treatment plant saying, hey, you might have a leak, you might need to check this out. And it's because, like, I'm not just costing me money, I'm costing them money. Because they noticed much more water coming out of the reservoir than usual and I'm using it and they can look at the water meter and tell exactly where it's coming from.

Sure.

So it's crucial for homeowners to be paying attention to this kind of stuff.

Same thing with swimming pools. Swimming pools, you know, the sun evaporates, you know, the water in your pool. Yeah.

I think Jim said it was like an 8th of an inch every day.

Every day.

It's crazy.

That is, and I have to fill mine up.

Yeah.

My girls are gone now. It's just my wife and I. Nobody uses it. I just go out there and throw money in it every month.

So, Jim, like, now that these positions are elected, I assume that there are opposing candidates for these positions. So, in your mind, if the wrong person gets in this role, what could that do that's detrimental to the homeowner?

Well, I think if the wrong person gets in the role, that it's not going to be immediate. For example, let's say that these new candidates came in there and they decided to drop this lawsuit.

Well, there's a— Meaning just let it go.

Yeah, just, okay, we're going to do this. There's a possibility that the water rates could go really high because all these other entities in the state already have a vested interest in this about the outcome of it. I don't think it's easily done. I think people are going to have to work through this issue. Now, my personal, as a mediator, I've actually talked to both sides and asked, tried to get them to come to the table, encourage them to come to the table, because these are things that can be worked out. The science of the past, Lone Star Groundwater just did a 3-year study after the lawsuit was filed that basically shows that, okay, we can increase the amount of water being pumped out of the ground to like 100,000 gallons,

100,000 acre-feet per year, which is a lot of water.

Right.

I'm concerned that that's not being done. They refuse to settle things that just goes on and on for whatever reason. But it's the taxpayers that are paying for it. This is not going to go away. And I think it's going to even cost more. There's an opportunity. I think the articles we read that we wrote about that Talks about the possibility that water could go even higher.

Yeah. Well, again, this is not even— I mean, this is not just like a local issue for us. I mean, like, water is crucial no matter where you live, right? I'm trying to remember the, the, the big story from the Midwest up north that was— that's the ongoing, uh, scandal with the—

do you remember that?

Flint, Michigan.

Flint, Michigan.

The pipes where they had the lead pipes. That was something different. That's an antiquated water system that was not upgraded. Fortunately, we don't have that down here in our city. We don't. Our system was upgraded. We're in the process every year of putting more and more, replacing and upgrading more and more infrastructure so that we don't have that type of problem.

Right, but if you get the wrong people in office who are going to neglect those systems or not pay attention to how they're run, I mean, you could In a very short period of time, probably have similar issues if you don't have the right people there, right?

Yeah, you could. I mean, all that stuff is possible, but hopefully there's enough eyes on everything now. And this is what I wanted to kind of tell your listeners about. We live in cities, in MUDs in your case. We have the most grassroots form of government in the world. The whole reason this country was founded was because people like us in a community banded together and said, we're going to have a city here, and then we're going to have a state. And the states got together, our colony got together, and we formed a country.

Territory.

Country. Territory.

Territory. That's it. That's right. And in Texas' case, we formed an entire nation.

That's right.

A republic. We were a country first, y'all.

That's right.

So we, you know, I tell everybody, people are like sheep sometimes. They just kind of follow blindly along, you know, sheeple is what a lot of people call them. They just kind of follow blindly along. Okay, well, I like this party. I like this stuff right here. I like these people. It doesn't matter what they're doing. I'm just going to vote for them. And you might have to do that sometimes on a state and national level because you don't always know, but in a local community, All you have to do is go down the street to City Hall. We're next-door neighbors. You know, we live close to each other, we work by each other, and we know each other. So come down to City Hall and be involved. Listen to what's

going on. Everything's posted by law. You know when things are happening, you know the decisions, stuff like that. That's the best thing that we can do to keep track of all this.

So in your mind, Is it difficult to get a hold of the mayor of Oak Ridge?

It is not. It is not. I have a card I give everybody. I have a phone number they call. It's got a recorded line on it, but I answer the call. Most of the time I get the emails. I've never failed to answer an email.

Right.

I've even gone to people's houses and talked to them, you know, because that's— we're a small town.

Yeah.

And that's important. You know, if it's important enough that somebody called me. We had a water issue. Now here's what small-town mayors do sometimes. We had a big water issue where a lot of— a computer glitch turned off a lot of people's water. That's bad. A lot of people got home from work, didn't have any water. I had a family come to my house, a husband, wife, and 2 children. I was not home. My wife was there. And they said, our water's off. What do we do? And my wife said, I don't know. You come take a shower here. They said, oh no, we just want the mayor to know. Well, we got it fixed that night. I mean, we had them go turn

everybody back on, that type of deal. But, and that's it. Things like, things happen. Things happen, but you're able to get in touch with people. We're very responsive to the needs of the people in our city.

Man.

Well, so in a small city like Oak Ridge, it's actually not that small.

It's—

It's 3,200 people.

3,200 people.

Who are wrapped around us. I mean, we've got a $100,000 city, 100,000 person city right across the freeway from us. We've got a 70,000 city. I mean, we're completely surrounded.

Yeah. So I mean, like even, I mean, 3,200 people, I mean, there's still a lot of it. It feels a lot bigger than 3,200 people for sure.

It does, especially mobility issues, stuff like that.

Yeah.

It feels a lot bigger.

And so what are some of like, what are some of the issues that homeowners ought to be paying attention to more being in a city like that?

Well, a lot of things. City ordinances are important. And in Texas, it depends on what kind of city you're in.

Okay.

We're a general law city. That means the state of Texas dictates a lot of what we do and how we do things by law. We have to do ordinances on everything.

What's an example of an ordinance that you guys have?

An ordinance would be like cutting your grass. Okay. We can't tell you to cut your grass until it's 12 inches tall, according to the state regulations. A homeowners association, on the other hand, can make their own rules.

Sure.

As long as they're usually set up when it's developed, they can lower it levels, they can enforce it. Homeowners is a very powerful organization.

Yeah.

They're like a government entity as well, but they're only for one specific person, a purpose to make sure it's taken care of. A city is multifaceted. You know, we regulate the speed limits, we regulate, you know, if you want a speed bump because the traffic's too heavy, there's people going too fast. Everything that involves the lifestyle of a homeowner in a city pretty much involves the city. Potholes— we just resurfaced our city 3 years ago at a cost of over $1 million. That's a lot of money. And but every street was scraped off, ground up, and relaid in new asphalt in it. But the older streets lasted us almost 20 years. So it's a big deal.

Yeah. So not a bad investment.

Not a bad investment.

Yeah, not at all. Over the length of time for sure. So I think one of the things that I didn't know a lot about whenever I moved to Houston was homeowners associations. And actually where I moved, I moved to a place that has a property owners association. So it's even just a little different than a homeowners association. So there are probably listeners out there who have heard of homeowners associations but have never lived under a homeowners association. Maybe they even, maybe they even have considered buying into an HOA, but for whatever reason have decided not to. What types of things should I know as a homeowner related specifically to an HOA, or in my situation, A POA?

They, those organizations are there to protect your property values. That's their sole purpose in the world is to make sure your property maintains or increases in value. Now, there's a lot of controversy about the appraisal district right now, whether or not they're appraising your houses too high and you pay too much taxes on it. But I've not found anybody yet that wouldn't take a lot more money for their house because it appraised more.

Sure.

You know, but that's just unfortunate. Our houses go up and down in appraisal. You pay taxes based upon that. The city of Houston, for example, is not regulated. You can live in a, in a part of Houston over there and you can have horses in your backyard and your backyard not be very big at all because there's just no ordinances. There's no regulations for it. Houston doesn't have anything like that.

Okay.

We do. You can't have horses inside the city limits in your yard.

Okay.

You know, there's— and your HOA or your POA is probably the same thing because it's going to affect the property values of you and your next-door neighbors. A lot of different regulations, mowing your grass, keeping your yard up, not putting signs out. You know, nobody likes to see these bandit signs strung all up and down. Now, this is political season. You're going to see them everywhere. But I'm talking about the kind that, you know, sell me your house, you know, I buy ugly houses or whatever, those type of things that that are just up there, but they are actually there. They will protect your investment even though they have to sometimes take people to court. I mediated a case last week where a homeowner

took the property management HOA in a small claims court, a JP court, for towing his vehicle off. Well, they had pictures of it. The vehicle was half in his yard. It was an old hadn't been registered in 3 years, it was half on and half off the property, and it was an eyesore. And the homeowners association, within their rights, took it away. And that's just, that's one of the things they can do. Yeah.

And so, you know, for instance, for us, if we wanted to take a tree out, for example, we had to, we have to submit it. But on top of that, I think the thing that is really nice is I can go back in, in even before I bought my house. And I can see the records of things that have been done to my house because of this property owners association. And so a lot of people, I think they, they think, oh, I don't want to buy into an HOA or a POA because, um, it's going to cost me money. And it does.

Mm-hmm.

We have to pay a fee every single month in order to be part of, of an HOA. And so a lot of people shy away from that, but at the end of the day, what you're telling me, what I'm hearing from you is it really is, it's almost an insurance policy to protect your investment and make sure that what you bought into is going to either maintain or make money for you.

Exactly right. And let me just say quickly, I know Craig lives out here in his subdivision, has a homeowners association, has a lake. The fees that are paid in that lake, in that property, your homeowners association goes toward maintaining a lot of that lake. They have a dredger out there. They're dredging the lake. They're keeping the values up. It is a good operation, but like everything else, citizens have to be involved. You can get homeowners associations with people that— self-serving individuals, stuff like that— can really not do well. So it's up to the people that live there, just like in the city, to go down the street, be involved in it, That way they know what's going on and it promotes transparency.

Yeah, I think that's, that's important is, uh, and again, if you're involved in one of those types of things, an HOA, a POA, or, you know, you live in a city, then, then know what's going on. Be informed of what you have bought into because it does affect you. And I think that's important.

Yep.

Yeah, we actually, we actually, I've got a couple of examples of Fun HOA stories. And actually, you brought up the dredger. That was actually shut down. Did you hear about that?

Yeah, the Corps of Engineers.

A guy got mad and tattled on us to the Army Corps of Engineers, and they came out and shut all the projects down. So, but like, prime example in my mind is my parents live in an older community that actually allowed their HOA to lapse. And so it's no longer an actual entity. I mean, they could I guess technically they could restart it whenever they wanted to, but everything that's happened since the nonexistence of the HOA would be grandfathered in, including the guy that bought the house down the street and then turned it into a chop shop.

Right.

And a drug den of some sort. So just a lovely establishment down there.

And I think next door to your parents, there's actually a zoo.

There is a zoo.

Yeah.

A zoo. A literal operational zoo.

Yes, it is. It's a private zoo, but it's a zoo. Yeah.

I can go, but I can go and take my kids and see this zoo.

Actually, it's a great time of year to take them right now. They have the pumpkin patch.

There you go.

You can go pet a kangaroo and get yourself a pumpkin.

That's crazy though.

Yeah. So when you don't have an HOA, that kind of stuff, if you don't, if you don't mind living next to a zoo, I guess, you know, then, you know, HOAs may not be your bag. But like, if you don't want to get attacked by a tiger, although they don't have— if you don't want to get eaten by a hyena, they have those now. Then, you know, HOA might not be a good—

It just all matters what priority you want.

Yeah.

Priorities. Yeah. So, well, cool. Well, what else do we need to kind of ask Jim about here?

Yeah.

So what are things that homeowners can most affect in their communities? I mean, like, say a homeowner comes to you and they want to talk to the mayor, like, where are they actually going to have sway and influence to act to affect what's going on in their community? I mean, obviously they can vote, but I mean, beyond that, when they, when they come to City Hall, how can they get involved?

Well, we have really 3 good ways to get involved. First thing is come to the city council meetings.

Okay.

Come see what's going on. See the agenda that's posted by law 3 days before.

And really quick, I mean, because I think a lot of people don't pay attention, What does a city council do?

We, we manage the city. We have a city manager form of government. We have a city manager, Richard Durr, brand new on the job. Our other one retired. Richard maintains the day-to-day operation. We have, I think, 49 employees. 18 of those are police officers. We have public works department. We have administration. He takes care of the day-to-day decisions that happen in running a city. The city council oversees that. We set the direction, policy, things like that of the city. As the mayor, I don't vote. I vote if there's a tie. I think I voted 3 or 4 times in my tenure and I really make a big deal out of it.

You're like the vice president.

Yeah, like, you know, boy, I can't stand this power, this pressure on me to vote. But I'm kind of like the face of the city. You know, I help with economic development. I talk to people. I'm the person the citizens can come talk to. And when they do come talk to me, I'm always encouraging them, you know, if it's a problem, we try to resolve it one way or another. But if they can't get what they want, at least they know why.

Hmm.

But we have 3 committees that we really push in the city. We have a Community Affairs Committee that actually helps do things in the city. We have a 4th of July parade and a car show. really successful. Then we have a fall festival that's also really successful. We had over 1,000 people come to our fall festival this past month. That Community Affairs puts on those type of events. They also have people that help our residents who can't help themselves.

Hmm.

We have some folks that have— need repairs on their houses, stuff like that. We try to help them in that regard. So they do a lot of good volunteer things. Secondly, we have our Planning and Zoning Commission. Planning and Zoning Commission sets those ordinances we're talking about. We just finished up in the past few months the roof ordinance, specific kind of roof you have. The brick ordinance, so much masonry has to be built on houses because we want to maintain the high values of our houses. And so we don't want somebody to come in and be able to build something that's substandard, that type of thing. We have a city inspector. code enforcement guy that goes out and looks at this type of stuff. Then the third thing we have is an

economic development corporation where they actually go out and help promote getting businesses in our city. We get— we collect a 2% sales tax from everything that's sold in our city. Part of that sales tax goes toward the economic development corporation to help promote the city and to do things for the city. They do a lot of stuff with the park. things like that for our residents. So that's all good things. So we oversee all that stuff. Citizens— and when we had— we just had a vacancy on the city council. One of our councilwomen had to step down because her family business had increased so much. So we appointed another lady to fill that position on council. We appoint people who are serving on those committees

because you come in and you start serving on those committees, you get to know the people, you get to know the everything that's going on, that makes you a perfect person to step up and to be— take on a bigger role as leadership.

So when that lady stepped down, I mean, that was essentially your pool of candidates right there.

That's it. It was.

Yeah, it was.

And that's how I became mayor. I was appointed mayor because I had been involved and led the long-range planning committee and stuff like that. So that's where we get them.

So you still enjoying this?

Yeah, I do. This is— I'll just make the official announcement now. This is my last term. You heard it here first, folks.

That's right. Was this announced here first?

I think it's the worst kept secret in the world. But I am— this is my last term. I'm just, you know, I have 2 more years, actually a year and a half now to go, and that's going to be it for me. It's time for somebody else to come in. I've got a phenomenal mayor pro tem named Paul Bond. who will be a great successor to me. He's been— he's very conservative. All of our folks, that's one thing they say, we are grassroots conservative. Any type of conservative movement you hear about, or you think about all this stuff, you can look at us. A lot of organizations out here like to talk about doing, oh, we're

conservative, we want to be transparent, we want to have the record, checkbook record online and all that. Okay, we've been doing it for 5 years.

Hmm.

We are extremely conservative. We promote good values, and we have probably the best police department in Montgomery County. You know, they call them the Oak Ridge Boys, and I like that. I make no apologies for having a highly visible, highly active police department because we have the lowest crime rate.

I always give them like a 5-mile-an-hour buffer when I go through there.

Good move.

I know I'm not getting any favors.

The mayor cannot— I tell everybody this.

Can you fix it?

Can you fix a ticket? I say, no, I need the money too bad. That's right. The city, the city needs it.

Listen, you heard it. You heard the disclaimer here.

That's right.

So when, when you, uh, when you do end your last term, how long will you have served?

Uh, I will have served, um, 9 years, almost 10 years.

Wow.

Yeah. That's awesome. Maybe one of the longest serving mayors there. I'm not sure. Most people are, are, are worn out or they get wise long before that. I don't know. I don't know what happened to me.

I'm tired just talking to you, man.

That's right.

It's a great job. When it's good, it's really good. But when it's bad, man, it's bad all over.

Yeah.

Well, cool.

Well, is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you feel like is important for us to know?

No, just the biggest thing is citizen involvement and how people don't realize our country was founded on principles of people having differences, getting together to work them out.

Hmm.

I think that's why I like mediation so much, because you can get people on complete ends of the spectrum and you can bring them together and they can create their own win-win situation. The problem, and I think this is in our country, we've lost a lot of that. We've lost a lot of it everywhere. If we can just start maintaining it at a local level and get through some of these, these bad things that are happening, the water situation, come to the table, work these things out. I'd like to think we can do it in Austin. We can do it in Washington, D.C. do it everywhere else. I tell everybody, I don't want the state of Texas coming into Oak Ridge North and telling me what to do.

Nobody knows better what's good for Oak Ridge North residents than Oak Ridge North residents. I'm sure if I were to ask Governor Abbott, all those other folks up there, he would tell you right away, I don't want Washington, D.C. in the state of Texas business. Well, that's the way I feel about it too.

Yeah.

We're perfectly capable.

Get involved. I think that's one of the things I heard. Know what's going on in your community, get involved, and be present. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do everything and all of a sudden become this political giant in your community. It's just a matter of saying, hey, I live here. This is the place that I've chosen to put my roots down, at least for this part of my life. And make sure that you know what you've bought into. And be involved.

Right. And ask questions. You know, this whole water situation I talked about, the candidates running for the Restore Affordable Water, the people backing them up, whatever, right, wrong, or indifference, we have the right as citizens to ask questions about everything. And we have the right to expect answers. That's what it's all about. You know, research the candidates, know who's doing what, but look out for the good of what's good for us today.

Yeah, definitely. Well, we sure do appreciate you giving us some of your time and coming in here to talk about some things surrounding what it means to be a homeowner. And so we just have one more thing that we like to do with all of our guests here on our show, and it's called the Final Four.

Final Four.

Yeah, so these are just 4 questions we like to ask everybody and get your take So the first one, what's the must-have tool that you won't leave your house without? And I know you're a mayor, so you're not out there physically working on homes, but you own a home yourself and you are capable of doing things. So if you had to have one tool that you wouldn't leave your house without, what would it be?

Well, I tell everybody as the mayor, I don't leave without my security detail. And they said, what? Where's that? Where are they at? And I said, well, if you could see them, they wouldn't be very secure for me. I really don't have one, but I, you know, I have a little penknife.

I bet your security detail, she is—

She's pretty tough.

Yeah.

I don't cross her.

Right, right. You know, I used to carry a penknife all the time. You know, the kind that had little scissors in it and had the little toothpick, all that kind of stuff like that, little tweezers. And you know, when they started taking away at airports, you couldn't carry those anymore. And I love that little knife because, you know, you mess around, you know, cut your fingernails, cut your finger with it, stuff like that. Well, I finally found one that I could carry in airports and everywhere. So it looks like one of my house keys. Okay, but you open it up, got a little penknife in it. And I use that more than anything in the world. Okay. So that would probably be the thing that I—

Don't leave the house without it.

Don't leave home without it.

Awesome.

Nice. All right, so question number 2, what is a job that you walked away from? Now, this is not necessarily like a professional job, but like, like project around the house or remodeling or, you know, landscaping, anything like that. What's a project you walked away from?

I tell you, it doesn't, it doesn't sound like much, but we have a coffee bar. It's got a sink in it. It's got this beautiful little brass or bronze looking faucet that comes up, 2 little knobs on it, and that thing Got so loose it just fell off there. And all it takes is, you know, this little dealer, and either screw it on there like that. I couldn't do it because I'm a big old boy, you know, big old boys rolling around inside a little bitty, little, you know, a little bitty cabinet thing just doesn't, doesn't work out very well.

Then you gotta stick it up in there.

I finally, I just finally gave up, you know, I ain't doing that. Fortunately, my son-in-law Nathan was there, and of course he's, he's a long, tall, skinny drink of water, and he's Curled his way back up there, got it. Now it's perfect. But I definitely walked away from this. Yeah.

Sometimes you just get into stuff and you're going, this is— I'm not cut out for this.

What am I doing here? Now am I gonna get up off this floor?

Is there a technical term there for shimmy? Did he shimmy up there?

I don't know. It looks like the squirrely thing. He squirreled around in there. It's almost like his whole upper body was up underneath that little cabinet in there.

Video evidence would've been even better. Yeah.

Right, right. Right.

Well, um, so one of the things we like to ask everybody too is, um, how do you wind down at the end of a long day? We just feel like that, um, you know, we all have things that we go through in our lives, and if we don't ever find a way to kind of decompress and, and take the stress level down a notch, uh, that we're gonna wind up blowing up someday, and, uh, someone's gonna be the, the brunt end of that, and, and And so, you know, we think that it's important to find a healthy way to wind down at the end of a long day. So, so how do you do that?

You know, when I first retired, and this kind of leads into what I do now, is it seemed like I became a Netflix addict. I like watched all these series of Netflix, you know, one after the other, Longmire and all this stuff like that, because it's just like, it was just like freeing your mind, just vegging out. So JJ and I watch TV in the evening times together. That's something we do together. We'll eat dinner, then we'll watch TV. Now granted, they're all her shows, you know, but she'll, she'll end up going to bed early, 9 o'clock, take a shower and go to bed. And she watches Andy Griffith and I get to finally watch my show. So I get, yeah, she, she, she lives in Mayberry.

There you go.

She lives in Mayberry.

All right. Very cool.

I like the cops in Mayberry way better than Oak Ridge. Oh yeah.

Barney will get you though. Barney will get you.

As long as he doesn't have to shoot you. Right?

All right. So last question. What is one of the best pieces of wisdom someone has ever given you?

Well, you know, when we talked about that, I thought about it and I'll tell you, it's about work. It's about work and family and When I became a manager a long time ago, the guy who was my mentor told me, he said, listen, he said, this company will let you work all of your off days. They'll let you work as long as you want to every day. They'll let you work all your vacation you want to, and they'll never say anything about it. No problem. So if you don't take time for yourself, if you don't take your time, then, you know, it's bad. You have to take time for yourself. And along those same lines, in the same discussion, he talks about, you know, at best, the job you do is

fourth. It should be fourth in your life at best. You know, God's first, your family's second, you yourself are third, and then after that comes your work.

Hmm.

And you don't need to get those confused. And I think too many times today, we get them confused. Because there's a lot, a lot of things that happen around the house as a homeowner, as a parent, as a spouse, husband, wife, whatever, that, that could really make a difference with. Yeah.

And it's, it's, it's so much easier to make decisions for your home and your family when you've set your priorities in line. I mean, even if you completely reverse those, it'd still be easier to make decisions. But I mean, like just, just having those laid out and say, this is what's most important. And then that's what's next. And that's what's next. So like when it comes time to make decisions and important shifts and moves in your family and your life and your career, it's easier to make those decisions because you've already decided what's more important.

Yeah. What you do, what you do for a living is what you do. It's not who you are.

Oh, you're going to get me started here. You're exactly right. Don't get me started on this.

I know exactly who you are.

No, you don't.

That's a good thing.

So Jimmy, if people have questions or they want to get ahold of you, I know we don't want to give out the mayor's cell phone number or anything like that.

Thank you.

But, but there, there may even be other, other mayors out there who might be struggling, have questions. They want to have like a, a network of, of, of mayors, or they, someone needs mediation or, or just some advice. Where, where can they get ahold of you?

Well, I, I have a website. It's actually my mediation website. It's, it's jkmediation.com.

Okay.

And that's, that's probably best. That has my contact information on there and address, stuff like that.

They can email you and all that kind of stuff.

Email me, stuff like that. I'd be glad to talk to anybody that wants to.

Awesome. Well, we'll put that up on the show notes so people can get ahold of you. And this has been cool.

Yeah, well, I've learned a lot. I appreciate you coming on and taking the time.

Thanks for having me.

I mean, we talked about water. We, we name-dropped Governor Abbott. That's right. That's right. So anything else we need to cover? Oh, you know what? We do have some stuff. If you want to follow us You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, at homeownershow.com. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes. What else have we got there?

We got Instagram. Go to Homeowners Show on Instagram. And, you know, if there's ever a time whenever you've got a question or you've got an idea for a show, maybe you've even got a person that you think would be good for us to interview, Send us a message, info@homeownersshow.com. We will get that and respond to you and take all those things into consideration for sure.

Yeah, and while you're there, you can buy one of these swanky t-shirts.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's super comfy.

Yeah.

Yeah, I had some hipsters eyeing it the other day.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, it was that cool.

Yeah, awesome.

I didn't tell them it was brand new.

They didn't know. They didn't know.

Well, cool.

Uh, yeah, uh, don't forget to subscribe, and thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen to our show. Um, and as always, uh, make sure that if you've got any questions, you send us a message. Um, but until then, we hope you have a great week, and we will see you next week on Tuesday.

See ya!

This is episode number seven of the Homeowners Show.

Nope, it's a six.

Oh, are you sure? We just did six.

Did we? Let me double check.

I'm pretty sure.

If so, this is going in the bump at the end because that'll be funny that I messed that up.

Yes, there'll be one more instance where I'm right, he's wrong.

Yeah, keep it tracked.

One time, Kevin.