Arlington is lucky to have three solid candidates competing for outgoing District 8 council member Barbara Odom-Wesley\u2019s at-large seat. We recommend voters choose school board trustee and past school board president Melody Fowler.<\/p>\n
Fowler, 67, boasts an impressive resume of civic and community involvement, including service on the Arlington Charities board and as vice-chair of the mayor\u2019s Education Coalition. We believe her connections to the community and experience in local government can serve Arlington residents well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our one disappointment is that Fowler did not show greater concern about the city\u2019s decision to raise the property tax rate by three cents last year to cover a major budget shortfall.<\/p>\n
She argued that the shortfall resulted from external factors, praised the city\u2019s process of handling the deficit and said she would have taken a similar approach. Our view is that the city did not do enough to offset the deficit before asking the taxpayer for a higher contribution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of the candidates for this seat offered strong ideas about how Arlington could have better navigated this financial challenge or how it might deal with future ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fowler offered thoughtful ideas about other issues facing Arlington, though. In our Voter Guide questionnaire, she wrote about the need to prepare for growth, which will mean redevelopment, since the city is mostly built out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fowler said she is interested in adding to Arlington’s on-demand public transportation system and is interested in rail lines as a possible future solution. She does not support using buses in Arlington, arguing those in Fort Worth are underused and clog up traffic.<\/p>\n
Jason Shelton, a University of Texas at Arlington professor, is also in this race. Shelton, 50, served as chair of the Arlington Unity Council, a group formed to examine race and ethnic relations.<\/p>\n
Real estate broker Corey Harris is also running. Harris, 38, has served on the downtown tax increment reinvestment zone board and the Arlington parks and recreation board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arlington is lucky to have three solid candidates competing for outgoing District 8 council member Barbara Odom-Wesley\u2019s at-large…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,288,1631,90221,87907],"class_list":{"0":"post-238414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-arlington-headlines","10":"tag-arlington-news","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-tp-editorials","14":"tag-tp-arlington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}