Levon: RIP

I've had trouble blogging.  I'm too bummed about Levon Helm's passing.  If you want real with a twist, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBuJB218UvU

I enjoyed chatting with Jared Foster last night at his meet-and-greet at Fuddrucker's.  His dad makes pretty good conversation, too.  Jared's a good candidate for city council in that he's young, energetic and bright.  He's a budding politician, trying to find out what I wanted to hear and then say it.  (If you read anything negative into that last sentence, you read it wrong.)

Part of our conversation stayed with me today.  Jared said that he thinks improving Killeen's reputation is an important goal.  I reacted badly to that.  I think that improving Killeen's reputation will be the long-term result of opening its government, reducing its crime, and eliminating its shabbiness.  Taking improvement of reputation as the immediate goal is grabbing the wrong end of the stick.  But I ran into trouble trying to explain my position to people in Austin this morning.  They said "why wouldn't you promote something like 'South by Southwest' in Killeen?  Wouldn't that contribute directly to the city's reputation?"

The difficulty, I think, stemmed from our starting points.  The Austinites began knowing that their city has a positive reputation and that it's recognized, at least by some, as a "music capital of the world".  Bringing in a SxSW was like confirming the brand.  Killeen, on the other hand, is known as a dirty place where people get robbed in their houses and kids bring guns to school. SxSW here, as welcome as it might be to us, would be paint on a pig, reputation-wise.

Much unlike Austin, Killeen needs to correct its problems and the (often overblown) reaction that residents and non-residents have to them.  What can the next Council do to promote those corrections?

• Keep the police department well-staffed and highly professional.
• Maintain and extend the sign ordinance.
• Encourage attractive housing with lots of green space, parks and recreation areas.
• Discourage squalid colonies of cheap, high density housing.
• Incubate and encourage the growth of TAMUCT.

Unfortunately, there are negative aspects to each of these, and (depending on the makeup of the next City Council) dissenting voices could well prevail.  I'm probably going to be in favor of the five measures above, and I intend to find Council candidates who support some or all of them.