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Friday
March 12, 2010 Since 1922 |
Trio aims to change council in election
By Ken Fountain
Baytown Sun Published May 2, 2004 Old River-Winfree is a small town with a big political rift. This year’s city council elections are a virtual replay of a public firestorm that broke out last year and has been simmering ever since.
A few miles north of the bustling Interstate 10 and with a population of 1,364, Old River-Winfree is about as rural as a town can be. The three contested city council races pit against each other two sets of candidates with different views of the town’s future.
One set of three candidates makes no effort to disguise the fact that they are running as a bloc – they even have campaign signs advertising that fact, along with the notion that if all three are elected, they would form a majority that can reverse what they see as the failings of the current council.
The three are Barbara Barber, running for Position 1; her husband Clayton Barber, running for Position 3; and J.F. Steadham, running for Position 5. Respectively, they face incumbent Jerren Young, James Robinson Jr. and Robert Smith.
For about a month last year, Clayton Barber served as mayor before he abruptly resigned, complaining among other things that Municipal Judge Robert Park and City Attorney Dane Listi were improperly conducting city business.
A short time later, Steadham filed a lawsuit against the city challenging the legality of an ordinance that extended the city’s boundaries to include the portion of a property owned by Position 5 Alderman Linda Barber (Clayton Barber’s former sister-in-law) on which her house is built. Steadham’s lawyer later filed a motion to have the complaint dismissed.
While the controversy seemed to be over, it has flared up periodically in recent city council meetings, including one in February after which Steadham and outgoing Mayor Marsha Ickes fell into an extremely heated discussion.
Steadham, 60, is a lifelong resident of Old River-Winfree and is self-employed in the trucking business. He claims the current city council is a “dictatorship” that makes up its own rules.
“They’ve been sitting there doing things like they want to. They ignore the way things are supposed to be done, the way the law says it’s supposed to be done,” he said.
Steadham said that the present city government wastes funds from franchise taxes on utilities to pay the city’s two-person police department and the city’s municipal judge, Richard Park of Baytown, and assistant municipal judge, Sean Park (Richard Park’s son, who lives and practices law in Dallas).
“The municipal judge wants to be the big dog. He wants to run the show. He’s running the city. I think it’s time that (the voters) jerked it out from under him,” Steadham said.
Contacted by phone, Richard Park said that his son also has a home in the area. He said because he is a municipal judge, he is prohibited from talking about the campaign.
“Everybody’s tired of it, everybody’s fed up with it,” said Steadham. “Seems like everybody’s scared to say anything, but I’m not scared to say anything. I’ve been there all my life. I’ve seen a lot of changes, and lately, all of the changes have been for the worse.”
Asked what he would do if elected to council, Steadham said he would try to eliminate both the police department (which is funded through a grant) and the municipal judge and assistant judge positions. He said those services could be better provided by the Chambers County Sheriff’s Department and the county courts.
“Why do you want to pay something when you’re already paying for it? Why do you want to pay for something twice? Old River-Winfree is spending the money, and the citizens are getting nothing for it,” he said.
“I guarantee them one thing – they won’t be wrong when they vote for J.F. Steadham, or Clayton Barber or Barbara Barber. It’ll take at least three on that council to change it, and that’s what needs to be done,” he said.
Clayton Barber, 58, reiterated Steadham’s concerns. The owner of a dump-truck service, Barber said he resigned as mayor because without a vote, he was powerless to effect change on the council.
“You’re going to have at least three city council members on there to make a change,” he said. “You’re going to have to have a majority of the vote. So that’s why we were looking at me and Steadham and my wife. We all three have the same issues.”
Among those issues is the local police department, which Barber said can only be contacted through the Chambers County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher.
“If you’ve got somebody kicking your back door down, well then Chambers County doesn’t know if (the police officers) are on or off. They’re trying to get a hold of them instead of dispatching the Chambers County deputies,” he said.
“They (the police officers) are not protecting nothing, they’re just up and down the road here with a speed trap. It’s all for money,” he said. “People are just fed up with the harassment, and the humiliation that they’re putting on the city out there.”
Asked what he would do if elected, Barber said he would vote to eliminate the police department and courts, and use the franchise taxes to buy new equipment for the fire department or put it in the bank.
“Then when occasions came up for some need for the community that would benefit the people in the community, you’d have something to do with it,” he said.
Barbara Barber, Clayton’s wife, said, “I just think there needs to be a change, anything that can make a difference. People just make up their own rules and laws as they go along, and that isn’t right.”
Barbara Barber, 65, agreed with her husband that the local police often harass drivers, pulling them over on flimsy grounds, such as an inspection sticker that’s about to expire.
Asked why she decided to run, she said that longtime Old River-Winfree residents like her husband (who has lived there for 59 years) have a greater grasp on what is going on in the community than relative newcomers. Originally from Oklahoma, Barbara Boxer has lived in Old River-Winfree for 27 years.
Against these three candidates are three others who, while not running as a bloc, share similar views about where Old River-Winfree is heading.
Running against Barbara Barber for Position 1 is incumbent Jerren Young, who was appointed to the seat in May to replace Roy Dillard, who resigned because of work commitments.
Young, 37, is an air conditioning and refrigeration mechanic for the Houston company Letsos. He has lived in Old River-Winfree for 25 years, except for three years in the 1980s when he lived in Baytown. His mother is Position 2 Alderman Gay Young.
Young said he decided to run for council to help manage the expected growth in West Chambers County and Old River-Winfree.
“With new highways comes more people, and we’ve got to start preparing for that. We’ve got to keep in mind that that’s going to happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Unless we keep an eye on it and manage it, it’s going to manage us,” he said.
Young said another focus of his campaign is to see that the city’s sanitation ordinance is enforced more stringently so that abandoned structures can be torn down with less delay.
“Something like that shouldn’t drag on for a couple of years. We might have to make amendments to the ordinance to streamline that process,” he said.
Young also wants the city to provide more financial support to the volunteer fire department.
“My goal is to preserve the city. There are others in this race that basically don’t want the city around. There has been talk about wanting to get rid of the police officers, and basically, we don’t even need a city. I believe we need to stay in control of our city. The citizens of Old River need to control their own destiny, because if not, somebody else will do it for them,” he said.
Young said that after the election, he would like to call a public forum in which community members could discuss what they wanted in terms of police protection.
Running against Clayton Barber for Position 3 is James Robinson Jr., 36, who works for GDS Engineers at the Exxon Mobil Baytown Complex. Robinson said he has lived in Old River-Winfree for about 20 years. He is chief of the volunteer fire department.
“I think I’m on board and current with what the city is wanting to do and the direction they’re trying to go. I want to do a little bit more civic duty for the city and try to better the whole place,” he said.
Robinson said he also supports the idea of providing more assistance to the fire department. But as chief of the department, he said that if elected to council, he would most likely abstain to vote on issues related to the department.
If elected, Robinson said he would take a neutral approach on issues before making a decision.
“You can’t be anti-city and try to be elected to the city council if you’re anti-city already. If you go in there with that attitude, then pretty much anything you do is going to be negative. I want to try to go in looking at all sides and taking everything into consideration instead of just the extremes,” he said.
Running against Steadham for Position 5 is Robert Smith, 59, who works for J.V. Piping at the Chevron Cedar Bayou Plant.
A relative newcomer to Old River-Winfree, Smith said he has lived in the city for a year and two months. Asked why he decided to enter the race, Smith said he was encouraged to by Frank Joseph Landry, the city’s former mayor who is running unopposed for that position. Landry is a close friend and Smith’s pastor at the Little Rock Baptist Church.
“It appears to me that some people in the city do not want the city to advance. I don’t understand that. I’m not for the city to be 200,000 people next week, next month, or anytime. But I do think we need to expect that there are other people moving into the city, and they need to be recognized,” Smith said.
Smith said he also is in favor of financially helping the fire department. He said he also wants to enhance relations between the city and officials from Chambers County and the Barbers Hill school district. He also is in favor of retaining the police department.
Smith said that his previous involvement with a historically black community in the Dallas area, where he worked with the city’s mayor and city council, as well as other political activities, give him the background that would benefit him on council.
“With my experience and my being a new kid on the block, I think that I could bring some new clout to the city council, and hopefully we can move forward,” he said.
Early voting continues through May 11. Early voting is held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, at the Old River-Winfree Community Building, 4818 FM 575 North.
Baytown Sun Published May 2, 2004 Old River-Winfree is a small town with a big political rift. This year’s city council elections are a virtual replay of a public firestorm that broke out last year and has been simmering ever since.
A few miles north of the bustling Interstate 10 and with a population of 1,364, Old River-Winfree is about as rural as a town can be. The three contested city council races pit against each other two sets of candidates with different views of the town’s future.
One set of three candidates makes no effort to disguise the fact that they are running as a bloc – they even have campaign signs advertising that fact, along with the notion that if all three are elected, they would form a majority that can reverse what they see as the failings of the current council.
The three are Barbara Barber, running for Position 1; her husband Clayton Barber, running for Position 3; and J.F. Steadham, running for Position 5. Respectively, they face incumbent Jerren Young, James Robinson Jr. and Robert Smith.
For about a month last year, Clayton Barber served as mayor before he abruptly resigned, complaining among other things that Municipal Judge Robert Park and City Attorney Dane Listi were improperly conducting city business.
A short time later, Steadham filed a lawsuit against the city challenging the legality of an ordinance that extended the city’s boundaries to include the portion of a property owned by Position 5 Alderman Linda Barber (Clayton Barber’s former sister-in-law) on which her house is built. Steadham’s lawyer later filed a motion to have the complaint dismissed.
While the controversy seemed to be over, it has flared up periodically in recent city council meetings, including one in February after which Steadham and outgoing Mayor Marsha Ickes fell into an extremely heated discussion.
Steadham, 60, is a lifelong resident of Old River-Winfree and is self-employed in the trucking business. He claims the current city council is a “dictatorship” that makes up its own rules.
“They’ve been sitting there doing things like they want to. They ignore the way things are supposed to be done, the way the law says it’s supposed to be done,” he said.
Steadham said that the present city government wastes funds from franchise taxes on utilities to pay the city’s two-person police department and the city’s municipal judge, Richard Park of Baytown, and assistant municipal judge, Sean Park (Richard Park’s son, who lives and practices law in Dallas).
“The municipal judge wants to be the big dog. He wants to run the show. He’s running the city. I think it’s time that (the voters) jerked it out from under him,” Steadham said.
Contacted by phone, Richard Park said that his son also has a home in the area. He said because he is a municipal judge, he is prohibited from talking about the campaign.
“Everybody’s tired of it, everybody’s fed up with it,” said Steadham. “Seems like everybody’s scared to say anything, but I’m not scared to say anything. I’ve been there all my life. I’ve seen a lot of changes, and lately, all of the changes have been for the worse.”
Asked what he would do if elected to council, Steadham said he would try to eliminate both the police department (which is funded through a grant) and the municipal judge and assistant judge positions. He said those services could be better provided by the Chambers County Sheriff’s Department and the county courts.
“Why do you want to pay something when you’re already paying for it? Why do you want to pay for something twice? Old River-Winfree is spending the money, and the citizens are getting nothing for it,” he said.
“I guarantee them one thing – they won’t be wrong when they vote for J.F. Steadham, or Clayton Barber or Barbara Barber. It’ll take at least three on that council to change it, and that’s what needs to be done,” he said.
Clayton Barber, 58, reiterated Steadham’s concerns. The owner of a dump-truck service, Barber said he resigned as mayor because without a vote, he was powerless to effect change on the council.
“You’re going to have at least three city council members on there to make a change,” he said. “You’re going to have to have a majority of the vote. So that’s why we were looking at me and Steadham and my wife. We all three have the same issues.”
Among those issues is the local police department, which Barber said can only be contacted through the Chambers County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher.
“If you’ve got somebody kicking your back door down, well then Chambers County doesn’t know if (the police officers) are on or off. They’re trying to get a hold of them instead of dispatching the Chambers County deputies,” he said.
“They (the police officers) are not protecting nothing, they’re just up and down the road here with a speed trap. It’s all for money,” he said. “People are just fed up with the harassment, and the humiliation that they’re putting on the city out there.”
Asked what he would do if elected, Barber said he would vote to eliminate the police department and courts, and use the franchise taxes to buy new equipment for the fire department or put it in the bank.
“Then when occasions came up for some need for the community that would benefit the people in the community, you’d have something to do with it,” he said.
Barbara Barber, Clayton’s wife, said, “I just think there needs to be a change, anything that can make a difference. People just make up their own rules and laws as they go along, and that isn’t right.”
Barbara Barber, 65, agreed with her husband that the local police often harass drivers, pulling them over on flimsy grounds, such as an inspection sticker that’s about to expire.
Asked why she decided to run, she said that longtime Old River-Winfree residents like her husband (who has lived there for 59 years) have a greater grasp on what is going on in the community than relative newcomers. Originally from Oklahoma, Barbara Boxer has lived in Old River-Winfree for 27 years.
Against these three candidates are three others who, while not running as a bloc, share similar views about where Old River-Winfree is heading.
Running against Barbara Barber for Position 1 is incumbent Jerren Young, who was appointed to the seat in May to replace Roy Dillard, who resigned because of work commitments.
Young, 37, is an air conditioning and refrigeration mechanic for the Houston company Letsos. He has lived in Old River-Winfree for 25 years, except for three years in the 1980s when he lived in Baytown. His mother is Position 2 Alderman Gay Young.
Young said he decided to run for council to help manage the expected growth in West Chambers County and Old River-Winfree.
“With new highways comes more people, and we’ve got to start preparing for that. We’ve got to keep in mind that that’s going to happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Unless we keep an eye on it and manage it, it’s going to manage us,” he said.
Young said another focus of his campaign is to see that the city’s sanitation ordinance is enforced more stringently so that abandoned structures can be torn down with less delay.
“Something like that shouldn’t drag on for a couple of years. We might have to make amendments to the ordinance to streamline that process,” he said.
Young also wants the city to provide more financial support to the volunteer fire department.
“My goal is to preserve the city. There are others in this race that basically don’t want the city around. There has been talk about wanting to get rid of the police officers, and basically, we don’t even need a city. I believe we need to stay in control of our city. The citizens of Old River need to control their own destiny, because if not, somebody else will do it for them,” he said.
Young said that after the election, he would like to call a public forum in which community members could discuss what they wanted in terms of police protection.
Running against Clayton Barber for Position 3 is James Robinson Jr., 36, who works for GDS Engineers at the Exxon Mobil Baytown Complex. Robinson said he has lived in Old River-Winfree for about 20 years. He is chief of the volunteer fire department.
“I think I’m on board and current with what the city is wanting to do and the direction they’re trying to go. I want to do a little bit more civic duty for the city and try to better the whole place,” he said.
Robinson said he also supports the idea of providing more assistance to the fire department. But as chief of the department, he said that if elected to council, he would most likely abstain to vote on issues related to the department.
If elected, Robinson said he would take a neutral approach on issues before making a decision.
“You can’t be anti-city and try to be elected to the city council if you’re anti-city already. If you go in there with that attitude, then pretty much anything you do is going to be negative. I want to try to go in looking at all sides and taking everything into consideration instead of just the extremes,” he said.
Running against Steadham for Position 5 is Robert Smith, 59, who works for J.V. Piping at the Chevron Cedar Bayou Plant.
A relative newcomer to Old River-Winfree, Smith said he has lived in the city for a year and two months. Asked why he decided to enter the race, Smith said he was encouraged to by Frank Joseph Landry, the city’s former mayor who is running unopposed for that position. Landry is a close friend and Smith’s pastor at the Little Rock Baptist Church.
“It appears to me that some people in the city do not want the city to advance. I don’t understand that. I’m not for the city to be 200,000 people next week, next month, or anytime. But I do think we need to expect that there are other people moving into the city, and they need to be recognized,” Smith said.
Smith said he also is in favor of financially helping the fire department. He said he also wants to enhance relations between the city and officials from Chambers County and the Barbers Hill school district. He also is in favor of retaining the police department.
Smith said that his previous involvement with a historically black community in the Dallas area, where he worked with the city’s mayor and city council, as well as other political activities, give him the background that would benefit him on council.
“With my experience and my being a new kid on the block, I think that I could bring some new clout to the city council, and hopefully we can move forward,” he said.
Early voting continues through May 11. Early voting is held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, at the Old River-Winfree Community Building, 4818 FM 575 North.